| Lee Kang-Sheng, Chen Shiang-Chyi,
Miao Tien , Cecilia Yip, Jean-Pierre Léaud
Master Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang directs this look at
three people looking for human connection. Hsiao-kang (Tsai regular
Lee Kang-sheng) is a young man who sells watches from a briefcase
in front of Taipei's train station. When his father (Mio Tien) suddenly
dies at the beginning of the film, it sends Hsiao-kang and his mother,
Lu, on two radically different trajectories. His grieving mother
becomes obsessed with the return of her dead husband's spirit. Hsiao-kang
starts to urinate into plastic bags and bottles rather than risk
bumping into his father's ghost in the middle of the night. Around
that same time, Hsiao-kang encounters an aggressive, though beautiful,
lass named Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi) who is travelling in a
couple of days to Paris. Entranced by the girl, he reluctantly sells
her his own watch even though he believes that item has some connection
to his father. The encounter leaves with Hsiao-kang with a fixation
that Paris is in another time. Soon, he is changing each and every
clock he can find back seven hours to Parisian time, forging an
obscure connection to Shiang-chyi. Shiang-chyi herself finds Paris
to be little different from Taipei in terms of alienation and isolation.
Though she has run ins with several people, including an irate Frenchman
in the middle of a lover's tiff and none other than Jean-Pierre
Leaud in a cemetery, she only finds some comfort when she meets
a woman from Hong Kong (Cecila Yip) who generously shares her hotel
room with her. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. |