Blossoms Shanghai

[Drunk Monk]

This is a new TV series by the legendary Hong Kong autuer Wong Kar Wai set in the 1990s when China experimented with Shanghai as a capitalist city by opening the stock market. It’s exhaustingly La KDH and lush, like WKW can be - his cinematography is so sumptuous, simply gorgeous demonstrations of how to set up shots, so much so that it’s downright exhausting. Each ep is just under an hour, and there’s going to be 30 of them. I don’t know if I can go the distance. It’s an alluring story of intrigues surrounding a financial wizard under the tutelage of a shrewd venture capitalist sifu. It jumps back and forth through time a lot - but there are these huge captions to keep us on track chronologically. But it teeters on the edge of brilliance and a confusing mess. 

I’ll give it a few more eps, but it’ll take a lot to stay invested for 30 eps.