Page 118 - Metropolis Megazine No.120 International

BLOSSOMS SHANGHAI

With «Blossoms Shanghai», Wong city in turmoil, where the com-
Kar-Wai returns—or rather, re- munist past coexists in constant
mains—in the territory where tension with the increasingly vi-
«Blossoms Shanghai», he has always felt most at home: sible signs of savage capitalism.
Wong Kar-Wai's first that of memory, melancholy, and
series, premiered the failed promises of love. But Each episode dives into a me-
exclusively on Filmin this time he does so in a new for- mory, real or reinvented, like an
Portugal on June 17. mat and on a new scale: over 30 emotional time capsule, whe-
Set in 1990s Shanghai, episodes, he transports the au- re the present is always filtered
it completes the trilogy dience to 1990s Shanghai, at the through the shadows of what has
that began with «In the precise moment when the city been lost. Time is not linear but
Mood for Love» (2000) and was waking up from a long poli- sensory: it moves forward and
«2046» (2004). tical slumber to reinvent itself as backward according to the emo-
a capital of money and ambition. tions of the characters, forgotten
SARA QUELHAS objects, returning songs, and si-
The narrative follows Ah Bao (Hu lences. The narrative functions
Ge), a man of humble origins who as a broken mirror, where each
survives the Cultural Revolution fragment reflects a moment—ne-
and reappears as a charismatic ver definitive, but always with an
businessman, shaped as much by ethereal beauty, as if the story it-
hunger as by cunning. Through self were constantly being rewri-
him, Wong constructs an intima- tten by the memories of its pro-
te and labyrinthine portrait of a tagonists.

118 METROPOLIS JULY 2025