Café Lumière

Hsiao-hsien Hou, Japan, 2003 (8.6*)

I can't explain why, but for some reason I found this movie to be poignantly moving, more so than other films of Taiwan master Hsiao-hsien Hou. Made for the centernary of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu (the 100th anniversary of his birth), Hou has made a film of similar pace, but one which is decidely Hou's.

Personally, I grew up loving trains, especially trips on them that lasted overnight. In one regard, this film is an homage to Tokyo's trains, as one character, a used bookstore manager (charismatic Tadanobu Asano), does artwork about them, and even records the sounds of each when he has time. Lead character Yoko (played by Yo Hitoto) spends much time in aimless train rides without a real destination, which becomes a metaphor of her own personal relationships.

There's a certain honesty in the human relationships portrayed here, especially how people are cordial but rarely connect on a deep interpersonal level, something the main character seems to avoid. Most of these scenes appear improvised, but with pleasant results; in one scene a dog keeps peeking in from the background and literally steals the scene away from the human actors by not doing much but acting like a natural dog.

For me, the final shot of multiple trains crisscrossing each other in a silent ballet of city life in action is one of the more poetic and lyrical closing shots in all of cinema. [See photo below]. The film won a Golden Tulip award in Istanbul, while actress Hitoto won a Japanese Academy Award for Newcomer of the Year.

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Three Times

Hsaio-hsien Hou, Taiwan, 2005 (8.3*)
This is a film in three parts, really more like three short films. The only thing they have in common is actress Shu Qi, who stars in each story, along with Chang Chen who plays her romantic interest in each.

The first story is "Time for Love". Shu Qi plays a hostess in a poolroom, and after she leaves a young man who left to serve in the army returns and searches for her. This is a gentle story about love awakening, with tender scenes of shyness and unfamiliarity that should be in everyone's memory.

The second story is "Time for Freedom", and it's the part that stands out as not fitting the film. It's the story of a courtesan in a brothel around 1910, and it really looks like a lost section of Hou 1998 film Flowers of Shanghai, about courtesans in a Shanghai brothel in 1880, a film Shu Qi was not in; maybe Hou wishes she had been. The disconcerting part of this is that when the characters speak, there's no sound, only piano music, then we get silent era placards with their dialogue well after it's spoken. There was no reason to inflict viewers with this, as concurrent subtitles would have sufficed.

The last story is "Time for Youth". Shu Qi plays a young woman with epilepsy, who lives with her lesbian lover, but becomes interested in a male photographer, who usually photographs female models. This has some exhilirating motorcycle footage, a la Wong Kar-Wai in Fallen Angels. Once again, a Hou film has a cinematic tribute to Wong, who has mentioned Kar-Wai in interviews; I think he sees himself as the Taiwan equivalent of what Kar-Wai is for Hong Kong cinema.

I suppose it's inevitable that comparisons be made with Max Ophuls' La Plaisir, three De Maupassant short stories about French romance. In fact, when Ophuls made his, these 3 part films were in vogue in Europe and the U.S. Perhaps Wong Kar-Wai has started this modern revival, with his Chungking Express and Fallen Angels, which were intended to be one long film with three parts but was cut into two films due to length, and which inspired Tarantino's Pulp Fiction (in his words), also in three parts.

Two parts of this film warrant a rating of 9, unfortunately the center portion gets about a 6 due to the unnecessary silent film pastiche. However, that section does have a beautiful color palette (see photo below)
Winner of 4 awards, out of 14 nominations

All these films of Hou's have won either best director or best film somewhere: Flowers of Shanghai; Good Men, Good Women; A Summer at Grandpa's; Tong Nien Wang Shi; In the Hands of a Puppet Master; Millennium Mambo; Three Times; Cafe Lumiere

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Millennium Mambo

Hsiao-hsien Hou, Taiwan, 2001 (7.7*)
If you're a fan of the films of Hou or Hong Kong filmmaker Wong Kar-Wai, (best of which are Chungking Express and In the Mood for Love) or like me, you just like watching Taiwanese beauty Shu Qi (Hsu Chi, photo below) just walk around, you'll enjoy this film of Hou's.

Hou gives us a snapshot of the life of aimless Vicky, who does little more than hang around night clubs. She reflects back in the beginning of this on her relationship ten years earlier with Hau-Hau, a jealous house rock dj, who generally mistreats or ignores her and wants her to account for her time away from him or phone calls to others. Whenever they break up, he starts following her around again. We also see Vicky later in Japan, with a different man.

This is a not like a typical western film romance: boy meets girl, they have a relationship, then they (a) get married, or (b) part ways, end of film.. This is a segment of Vicky's life that covers roughly a decade, and we see scenes from each portion to give us a picture of her overall lifestyle. Much of the film is linked or propelled by electronic trance music, and it all fits together to create a very modern style, to me, reminiscent of Wong Kar-Wai.

Director Hou said in an interview that he wanted to show Taiwan night life and incorporate the trance music of Lim Giong (who co-wrote the music), so he used all Taiwanese actors. On the dvd, I like the longer, deleted "In Japan" segment that gives Shu some leeway as an actress to show more emotion than in the rest of the film, where she seems mostly just angered by life circumstances. She is certainly worth watching, as are all the films of Hou. He's definitely an artist, usually bringing visual poetry to the simplest of stories.

Winner of 6 awards, including a technical prize at Cannes

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Flowers of Shanghai

Hsiao-hsien Hou, Taiwan, 1998 (7.8*)
Without a lot of action, Hou paints a picture of life in upper-class brothels in Shanghai in the 1880's. The courtesans were known as "flower girls", hence the title. They were often bought as little girls, and kept in the house as servants until of age to go into the trade. Many never rose above servitude to become successful courtesans. In this tale, we see all types, but the stories center on several courtesans in their prime, and reveal to us all their gossip, conniving, and scheming.

Meanwhile, the clientele basically does little more than play drinking games and remain noncommital regarding taking better care of their mistresses. Many characters pass through the houses, yet Hou focuses on just key moments and conversations. Tony Leung is the best known of these actors.

The movie never leaves the internal rooms of the flower houses, and you feel a sense of the social circumstances that ensnares all the characters, whether they're patrons or the purchased. The cinematography is beautiful, as are the women, shot in the low-lighting of the interiorr spaces, very reminiscent of that in Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, shot in candlelight, with the same color palette as Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love.

Probably not the most involving of Hou's films, but one worth seeing nonetheless. It is ranked #898 on our compendium of all film polls

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