This film, set in the late 30s, dealing with Europeans in Shanghai just prior to World War II and the Japanese invasion of China, takes it's own sweet time getting anywhere, not that it really ever got much of any place.
There really isn't that much of a plot--there are a great many scenes that are very much like scenes already shown.
The main problem I had with this film was that the romantic side of it is too little and too late.
Ralph Fiennes (and his brother) seem to be the only actors in Hollywood who have any interest in playing in a romantic historical drama. I'm thankful that the Fiennes brothers are willing to do this, or we'd never get any historical,romantic dramas at all.
Natasha Richardson plays the widowed Countess Sofia, an exiled Russian aristocrat, who is in Shanghai with her late husband's family and her little girl, Katya.
In order to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, Sofia works as a taxi dancer in a club. Her in-laws look down their noses at her--criticize her and feel her work is shameful--while they sit on their butts doing nothing, other than trying to figure out how they can regain their previous status in society. For reasons that were never clear to me, they seem to think if they can go to Hong Kong (an expensive undertaking)their lives will turn around.
Ralph Fiennes plays a blind man named Todd Jackson--I never did understand exactly what he did for a living, and his blindness never really contributed that much to the story, other than a couple of times.
Anyway, his dream is to own a nightclub where all kinds of different political factions will gather--why he wants this, I don't know--since it seemed to me such a mixture was just asking for trouble. Quite a lot of the movie focuses on this, and quite frankly I had very little interest in that part of the story.
Eventually we have some romantic passion between Mr. Jackson and the Countess, but it is pitifully little--and the film is more than half over before we get this reward.
Therefore, I only gave the movie three stars.
There really isn't that much of a plot--there are a great many scenes that are very much like scenes already shown.
The main problem I had with this film was that the romantic side of it is too little and too late.
Ralph Fiennes (and his brother) seem to be the only actors in Hollywood who have any interest in playing in a romantic historical drama. I'm thankful that the Fiennes brothers are willing to do this, or we'd never get any historical,romantic dramas at all.
Natasha Richardson plays the widowed Countess Sofia, an exiled Russian aristocrat, who is in Shanghai with her late husband's family and her little girl, Katya.
In order to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, Sofia works as a taxi dancer in a club. Her in-laws look down their noses at her--criticize her and feel her work is shameful--while they sit on their butts doing nothing, other than trying to figure out how they can regain their previous status in society. For reasons that were never clear to me, they seem to think if they can go to Hong Kong (an expensive undertaking)their lives will turn around.
Ralph Fiennes plays a blind man named Todd Jackson--I never did understand exactly what he did for a living, and his blindness never really contributed that much to the story, other than a couple of times.
Anyway, his dream is to own a nightclub where all kinds of different political factions will gather--why he wants this, I don't know--since it seemed to me such a mixture was just asking for trouble. Quite a lot of the movie focuses on this, and quite frankly I had very little interest in that part of the story.
Eventually we have some romantic passion between Mr. Jackson and the Countess, but it is pitifully little--and the film is more than half over before we get this reward.
Therefore, I only gave the movie three stars.