The Banquet

Dimple and I left Loyola House's mini-banquet at five past eight to catch the last-full-show of The Banquet at the Gateway in Cubao. We arrived a little bit too early -- for movie begins at 9:40 p.m. While waiting, Dimple took me out for a cup of coffee at my favorite espresso nook -- Figaro.

I started getting addicted to coffee only after College. I was, then, a rookie in the Bank of the Philippine Islands. I was into Leasing and I did not know anything about finance and accounting. I was a fresh graduate who majored in Literature and I was terribly illiterate with present and future values, ratios and debits and credits. But I remember Mike and Sammy, who were both accounting majors. The two would bring me out for breakfast at Figaro in the Cattleya Condominium just to share their thoughts and know-hows on financial analysis, ratios, etc... I enjoyed those times -- a free lecture and the tab was always on them.

It was nice to be new.

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But The Banquet was old. It was old China. And the plot was old -- it was almost like Shakepeare's Hamlet. However, the movie, in and by itself, was compelling. The Kung-Fu fanfare plus the courtly intrigues, the multi-faceted affairs (the sensual and the political) were riveting. Zhang Ziyi's (or Ziyi Zhang) innocence, frostiness, manipulative-ness were beguiling. She was Empress Wan, "a young and beautiful woman whose skill with a sword is legendary in the nation. Wan is locked in a hollow marriage to the Emperor but harbours a devastating secret love for the introverted and melancholic Prince Wu Luan (played by Chinese idol Daniel Wu). Once her childhood sweetheart, Wu Luan is now her stepson. When the Emperor dies suddenly, his conniving younger brother Li (Ge You) assumes the throne. The savvy Wan immediately sees through Li’s murderous ambition and knows that Wu Luan’s days are numbered. In a calculated bid to save her love and maintain her own position, she concedes to marry Li, who has surreptitiously dispatched guards to assassinate his nephew."

The Banquet is about the sumptuous of desires – power, sex, love. These are the very things that propels the characters "deeper and deeper into labyrinths of their own making. It grabs hold of us and we hurtle headlong through opulent conspiracies, flashing swords and bodies swirling in brilliantly choreographed combat and hidden embraces."

This is one banquet I would not forget.