Flowers of Shanghai is a 1998 Taiwanese drama film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. It is based on the novel The Sing-song Girls of Shanghai (1892) by Han Bangqing, which was originally written in the Wu language (吳語) and translated into Mandarin Chinese by Eileen Chang. The film stars Tony Leung as a wealthy patron and Michiko Hada, Annie Shizuka Inoh, Shuan Fang, Jack Kao, Carina Lau, Rebecca Pan, Michelle Reis and Vicky Wei as "flower girls" in four high-end Shanghai brothels. It was voted the third best film of the 1990s in the Village Voice Film Poll conducted in 1999. The film was selected as the Taiwanese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 71st Academy Awards.
DVD Cover
Hou Hsiao-hsien is a retired Mainland Chinese-born Taiwanese film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a leading figure in world cinema and in Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement. He won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1989 for his film A City of Sadness (1989), and the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 for The Assassin (2015). Other highly regarded works of his include The Puppetmaster (1993) and Flowers of Shanghai (1998).
Hou in February 2016 at a screening of The Assassin at the Cinémathèque Française.