HOU HSIAO-HSIEN: TWO FILMS
Reviews posted on my website
Hou Hsiao-hsien: Good Men, Good Women (1995) Netflix
Puzzling multilayered picture of Taiwan's past and present
[Excerpt:]
Hou's concept is an interesting one: instead of a straight linear narrative either about the White Terror period in Taiwanese history or about an actor with a dead gangster boyfriend, he overlaps the two, and adds a further layer by putting the gangster a couple of years ago, and the actress now getting ready to act in a historical film about the White Terror, while being bugged in the present by somebody who sends her faxes of a stolen diary about the gangster, and calls and breathes into the phone. Hou isn't trying to spoon-feed us, and that's admirable. He is also allowing us to ponder complex inter-historical relationships. But the effect of the spliced layers is jarring and doesn't always work.
Hou Hsiao-hsien: Millennium Mambo (2001) Netflix
Such beautiful angst
[Excerpts:]
Atypically for Hou, the camera moves around quite a bit too in this film, following the people and hugging their faces and bodies -- but also lingering, in his old style, statically observing doorways, walls, light fixtures, or windows with a train going by outside. . .as always for Hou and for many Chinese directors, the visuals are lush and beautifully lit. . .This is a remake of Antonioni's L'Avventura, in winter, with young attractive Asians -- and Qi Shu as the new Monica Vitti -- but without the world-weariness or awareness of any sort of fading cultural heritage.