Winner of the top prize at Venice, the Golden Lion of St. Mark, Bei qing cheng shi is one of Hou Hsiao-hsien’s most important and most highly regarded films without being a particular favorite of mine. The screenplay by Chu T’ien-wen and Wu Nien-Jen details more plot than Hou’s lyrical and realistic gifts can handle, […]
Tag Archives: Hou Hsiao-hsien
Seven-year-old Simon’s communion with it, and his attempt to get a tiny grip on it, precede a red balloon’s ascension to the Paris skies. Thereafter, at liberty, it becomes a floating cherry moon possibly safeguarding the child, passing by windows and punctuating his childhood with its gracious presence. Simon does not see it, although his […]
Taiwan’s rudderless young underclass is epitomized by two low-level criminals—their criminality eventually gets politically connected upwards—and the girlfriend of one of them. These are Kao (played by Jack Kao, who with King Jieh-Wen wrote the story that Chu T’ien-wen turned into a brilliant script), Flathead and Pretzel. In the opening shot they are onboard a […]
Written by longtime collaborator Chu Tien-wen and the director, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Zui hao de shi guang consists of three segments, each superbly acted by the same young leads (Shu Qui, Chang Chen), each set at a different time (1966, 1911, 2005) and in different Taiwanese locations. Each in its way is a romance, and perhaps […]
The following is one of the entries from my 100 Greatest Asian Films list, which I invite you to visit on this site if you haven’t already done so. — Dennis Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895 under the Manchu treaty; the end of World War II, fifty years later, brought liberation. Parallel to […]
Dennis Grunes 