"House of Flying Daggers"

Ziyi Zhang, Kaneshiro and Lau all have the charisma of old-fashioned movie stars. (Ziyi Zhang, formerly known as Zhang Ziyi, played Jen in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," and although she wasn't the star, she lingers -- in my mind, at least -- as its most memorable character. Kaneshiro was the pineapple-eating cop in Wong Kar Wai's "Chungking Express." Lau, a huge star in Asia, may be best known to Americans as the star of "Infernal Affairs," which was recently released here.) Ziyi Zhang and Kaneshiro, in their early, prickly, falling-in-love scenes and their later, wrenchingly tender ones, use the screen space around them as if it were a canvas -- the air around them vibrates with muted erotic tension. And Lau, his stern demeanor giving way to peeled-naked vulnerability during the course of the picture, gives a performance that thrums beneath the surface of his skin. The secrets revealed in the last quarter of the film completely change the shadowy light around the character of Leo as we see him in the first half.

"House of Flying Daggers" is one of those pictures in which every frame has been lavished with care. Yet it never looks overworked. Zhang's last picture, the exhilarating and equally gorgeous adventure epic "Hero," did well with American audiences. Before that, Zhang, who lives and works in China, was best known (in the States, at least) for art-house pictures like "Ju Dou" and "Raise the Red Lantern."

"Hero" was Zhang's first foray into wuxia, or martial-arts movies. And he has said that "Hero" was just a rehearsal for "House of Flying Daggers," a way of mastering the genre's conventions. Here, Zhang is clearly in complete control -- and still, the picture has a relaxed, fluid feel to it. He takes the staples of wuxia films -- bamboo-forest fight sequences, for instance, like the one seen in Ang Lee's pale-by-comparison "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" -- and recasts them with subtle twists. In the "House of Flying Daggers" bamboo-forest sequence, Jin and Mei flee from a group of soldiers (the baddies slide down their individual bamboo stalks face-forward, with a silently deafening "whoosh"), only to hit a trip-wire that causes hundreds of bamboo spikes to pop up through the forest soil like giant pencil points.

The sound design of "House of Flying Daggers" is so vivid it's practically part of the cinematography. (The director of photography here is Xiaoding Zhao; the picture was filmed in Ukraine.) Mei and Jin trek through forests that shift from flame-orange tones to velvety moss-green ones; they take a breather in a vast wheat-gold field, where Jin picks flowers for Mei. (If that sounds corny, I should note that Jin harvests massive bunches of posies without ever dismounting his horse.) The wind -- which Jin considers his alter ego -- travels with Jin and Mei like a discreet but always present accomplice; we hear it, and other forest sounds, as Mei does, quietly intensified.

Every sight and sound has resonance: The shivery whisper of flying arrows, the way Mei's delicate feet bounce off a group of soldier's upturned shields as if she were bouncing off giant piano keys. Zhang speaks to us through the details, in the way a flying dagger pierces a single droplet of blood suspended in air, or the way a fight sequence begins in autumn and continues well into winter, the weary warriors lunging through drifts of snow to get at one another -- it's as if they've been at each other's throats not just for minutes but for months or even years.

As a director, Zhang spoils us, offering us visual and aural luxuries as if they were delicacies on a tray. For example, the first half hour of "House of Flying Daggers" features not one but two dance sequences, the second even more spectacular than the first. The details of the second -- an elaborate performance called the "Echo Game" -- are so remarkable they have to be seen to be believed. So I'll describe only the first: The performance takes place in a grand, meticulously decorated room, its floor a tiled mosaic of pastel butterflies and peonies. Mei, whom Jin has commanded to dance, stands in the center of the room, waiting for her cue. Assorted temptresses, draped lavishly yet modestly in gowns of orange, blue and gold, flutter at the sidelines. The music starts -- it's supplied by a band of beauties in blue robes, who sit in a row with their legs daintily crossed, plucking their stringed instruments -- and Mei reacts, cocking her head slightly as if she were responding more to the vibrations of the colors around her than to the music.

The song -- about a woman so beautiful she can destroy whole cities with a glance -- at first seems too somber to suit this diminutive, if self-possessed, beauty. But as Mei begins to dance, her arms elongated by ribbonlike sleeves of pink chiffon that swirl and snake around her, we realize she has taken possession of the whole room. Everyone, including the cocky young deputy who has come to arrest her, belongs to her, and from that moment, "House of Flying Daggers" takes possession of its audience, too. It reminds us that there's no greater moviegoing pleasure than to give ourselves wholly and willingly to the picture in front of us. "House of Flying Daggers" is heroically seductive; there's no recourse but to faint into its arms.

• View blog reactions