Majestic provocation no less than bizarre is this somewhat lysergic but yes, superb trip, of a persecuted (Gilbert de Quincy) by the anger of Brahma and the hatred of Vishnu! In the midst of the murky hubbub between the Tong and the people due to the trafficking of Asian women for auction as in the s. XIX, the apocryphal character Gilbert de Quincy (accidental Dilettante out of occasional curiosity) arrives a century after those famous Memories to cursed shores, as can be seen, with the surreptitious password and the tattoo of the "Moon Serpent" on his arm, although with resonances of the real writer Thomas de Quincy, but who is opposed to Ling Tan, if there is already, an unquestionable Chinese fatalism in the impossibility of opposing human destiny?; those who did, like George Wah, died: "not even with all the water from all the rivers in the world can the ink be erased from what is already written and what is in store for us," Ching Foon repeats to one of the captives, like welcoming you to SanFrancisco. The girls create too much opium, and the enigmatic Ruby Low handles the confusion of auction public protests cleverly and anonymously. Gilbert, since his transcendental motivation does not show off even remotely, will be an ephemeral captive of masked men and will try his luck taking a village bath among kidnapped outcast women, like the dying Look Gow, or caged like the nice little dwarf who is bored by marriage and he says he knows -until he got bored- the old man Ling Tan. But Gilbert seeks - here comes another epithet: "the flower of a thousand delights" and he will expose himself and risk at the auction at the time of the Rat, yes, he will risk to die in (another epithet) "the ordeal of the 1000 cuts", more than for the beauty whose fame precedes the famous flower, to find out in depth the sinister plan behind the white slave and opium trafficking network. And right in those unhealthy hypogea, Gilbert will try to dream with his pipe, wander thanks to the black idol while monsters and abysses circulate by his side in secret darkness where he will not understand if he has died or if he is beginning to live. Gilbert, an accidental dilettante due to the occasional curiosity, will taste opium and, as I have already indicated, haunted in the bowels of his mind by the hatred of Vishnu, he will end up in the "Hall of Benevolent Hours" exactly at the time of the Rat. Finally, the scene when the Flower of Burma descends into its cage is exquisite despite Zugsmith's excessive excess of light, who could have done a little more to distill a rarefied and dark act among the audience consuming ginger and opium sitting in silk cushions, bidding two, three or five heads for them. It was not a dream of the poppy, the dwarf was not lying when she said that she would take care of him until the end in the sewer when he died with the knife and Gilbert, being dragged away by the waters that only apparently were drainage.
