Jia Zhang Ke’s documentary loosely follows the pulse of Shanghai from the 1850s to present day. He feels the pulse by interviewing a spectrum of Shanghainese . Some recognizable like Hsiao-hsien Hou, Rebecca Pan others obscure to a western audience. Their stories bring forth different emotions but none really test your emotional threshold. Plus the lack of interviews with the common man left a gaping hole in the film. Somehow it was the quiet presence of Zhang Ke’s muse, Tao Zhao, that left an impression. Her silent presence evokes the trademark stillness of Zhang Ke and showing that he might be better of sticking to fiction.
Rating: * *
Vicky (Qi Shu) is constantly at odds with her boyfriend Hao-Hao (Chun-hao Tuan) and always breaking up with him. She finds herself using mysterious Jack (Jack Kao) with a shady past, as an anchor in her turbulent life. Like all of Hsiao-hsien Hou films this one too looks at human emotion and passion with dispassionate lenses.
Love is the theme in the three disconnected vignettes that make up this film. The only thing common is that Chen Chang and Qi Shu plays lovers in all three. Set in 1911, 1966 and 2005, music of different eras play an important role in conveying the mood of the lovers.
The film opens at a dinner table with drunken men playing drinking games and waited upon by stunning women. There is a still impassive face in that crowd. A face that over powers every scene. Coming across a Hsiao-hsien Hou flick featuring Tony Leung, I was predictably drawn to it. The flowers in the movie are obviously not him but the courtesans who live in the expansive brothels of Shanghai in the 1880s. The women scheme to buy their freedom and love using "feelings" as a currency. A well shot period drama.
A gritty gangster flick directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou shows Kao (Jack Kao), a small time crook in Taipei who wants to go legal. He hopes to invests in a restaurant and settle down. But his partner in crime, Flatty (Giong Lim) won't let him. Flatty's girl, Pretzel (Annie Shizuka Inoh) only adds to the dead weight that drags Kao down.
A movie within a movie with the past and present of actress Liang Ching (Annie Shizuka Inoh) juxtaposing the role she is playing in the "within" movie. Liang in the movie plays Chiang Bi-Yu, an anti-Japanese revolutionary in the 1940s. While doing this role she finds her past crowding into her present as the tendrils of her dead boyfriend creeps back into her life. Aimed at drawing attention to the anti-Japanese movement in Taiwan the film meanders and the three threads barely hold together.
There is a thin line separating a excruciatingly boring film from a very absorbing one. This masterpiece by Hsiao-hsien Hou highlights this fact. It is a movie that cares not for the viewer or in gentler terms includes the viewer as an after thought. It is very interesting to note that Hou plays scant respect to the 180 degree rule just like Yasujirō Ozu to whom this piece is dedicated.
