PLASTIC FLOWERS

A love triangle with a catastrophic ending revolving around a young widow named Chunhua who inherits her husband’s plastic flower factory. Business is not good and Chunhua doesn’t appear to have much of an idea. In fact, it doesn’t look as if she knows how to cope at all with the many economic problems associated with her inheritance.
Perhaps this is because she simply isn’t interested. In fact, this lonely member of China’s nouveau-riche shows far more interest in men. For this reason she begins using the factory as a showroom for her powers of seduction, trying out her wiles on young male workers with artistic leanings. Her first victim is the shy and introverted Qiusheng.
Qiusheng plays the flute and has a stutter. He believes that now his dream of romantic love has been fulfilled. At the same time, Chunhua makes a move on the crafty flower designer Wang, who, of late, professes to be Qiusheng’s best friend.
The intimate relationship between these three people reflect, in microcosm, the social changes that have taken place in the wake of modern-day China’s economic liberalisation. Feelings, so Liu Bingjian’s film, have become as phoney and artificial as a bunch of plastic flowers churned out in a
factory.