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Earlier this week, I watched the first few movies Tsai Ming-liang directed. I’d seen Goodbye, Dragon Inn before, but none of the others. (I will be discussing plot details from all the ones I watched (Rebels of the Neon God, Vive L’Amour, The River, The Hole, What Time Is it There?), so I guess this serves as my spoiler warning, though I’m not sure I’d consider them particularly spoilable films.)
In any case, they’re really good. I love how obsessive he is. The same actors who play a family in his first film, Rebels of the Neon God, play a family in his third, The River, five years later – but not only do the actors recur, they live in the same apartment. (And I don’t have a good screen-grab of it, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same apartment in What Time Is It There?, from four years later. In What Time, the father has died, but the mother and son are the same actors again. )
The movies are, in general – at least the ones I’ve seen – about people in the city having a specific kind of terrible time next to each other. The “alienation” of Tsai’s characters is always staged in close proximity to others. The protagonist of The River is visibly isolated by his pain: he writhes constantly, his face wrenched into a permanent wince; he does not respond to those who talk to him. In one of the most memorable and harrowing scenes of Vive L’amour (maybe my favorite of the five of Tsai’s films I’ve seen), the character played by Lee Kang-Sheng is trapped underneath the bed while two other characters have sex, the mattress bouncing inches from his face.
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