As Cai Mingliang's debut work, the iron triangle setting with Li Kangsheng, Miao Tian, and Lu Yijing as a family of three has been established throughout Cai Mingliang's early works. The family of three is full of weird, alienated, dull, twisted everyday vibes, and the lack of dialogue and bizarre physical behavior is even more depressing. Li Kangsheng's signature image of thinness, low self-esteem, depression, and eagerness to find an outlet for desire has been rooted in the hearts of the audience since then. Cai Mingliang has photographed Li Kangsheng all his life. From young to middle age, Li Kangsheng's face is Cai Mingliang's movie business card. It is Cai Mingliang's strange dream after another, and "Youth Nezha" is the beginning of the dream place.
Xiaokang, played by Li Kangsheng, has homosexual tendencies in Cai Mingliang's trilogy. In this film, he destroys Azer's motorcycle. Looking at the angry Azer, Xiaokang hides in the room happily and can't help himself. This is the moment when he has a relationship with Azer, and he is like a naughty little girl who is happy because she has made fun of the boy she likes. It's just that when he wanted to help Azer who was pushing a car on the road, he was disdainfully rejected by Azer. Xiaokang is still the repressed boy, and his desires are over. In "Long Live Love", Xiaokang's kiss to A Rong was a brave step he took. For the first time, his same-sex desire was satisfied through physical contact, and Cai Mingliang began to be generous to Xiaokang. In the last part of the trilogy, "River", Cai Mingliang let Xiaokang, whose neck hurts from being suppressed, finally get a complete release of his desires, but the object became his father...... Cai Mingliang used three Buqu played tricks on Li Kangsheng, and it was inhumane.
At the beginning of the film, Azer and Abin steal coins from a public phone booth, ride a motorcycle on the street, and Xiaokang pierces cockroaches with a compass in a dimly lit home, slaps the cockroaches on the window, shatters the glass and cuts them The picture of the hand is in sharp contrast. One is a rebellious and dashing cool boy, and the other is a repressed and decadent honest man. In addition to showing the well-off same-sex plot, the film also shows the repressed honest man's yearning for rebellion. Xiaokang stopped for a long time in front of the James Dean poster in the game room, which is very symbolic. James Dean, as the image spokesperson of Hollywood rebel youth, his "Rebel Without a Cause" once swept the whole United States. Xiaokang saw Azer riding a motorcycle with his girlfriend in his father's taxi. Due to his father's complaint about Azer's occupation, Azer smashed the rearview mirror of his father's taxi and sped away. This is the first time Xiaokang has met A Ze, and since then he has developed complex feelings for this person who is completely different from himself. He quit the cram school, took the refunded tuition and wandered on the streets, lingered in the game hall, stalked and peeped at Aze, and pretended to be a ghost in front of his parents was his first step to becoming a rebel.
Azer's life looks cool on the surface, but it is empty in essence. The drains in the home were constantly oozing, damp, and dim, a regular element of the character's residence in Tsai Ming-liang's films. The use of water as a metaphor for repression, darkness, anguish, distorted life and mental state reaches the extreme in "River". A Ze also has a moral side. After he and his brother A Bin brought a drunk A Gui into the hotel room, they did not take advantage of the danger, but settled A Gui and left. Apart from lingering in the game hall and stealing property, A Ze and A Bin had nothing left. After A Ze and A Gui had sex, instead of hugging each other to sleep happily, they left A Gui and ran to play games. The emptiness of life and the emptiness of emotion fill the air. Agui was angry with a strange man because Azer let go of his pigeons, but was stopped by Azer who came here. This poor cannon fodder man is really distressing.... The flooded home says it's alright for us to get out of here. This is the thought of starting over, but Aze said he didn't know where to go. The emptiness and emptiness of the spirit have already penetrated deep into the bone marrow, and there is no way to start with change. And Xiaokang came to the men's and women's phone dating club, where men answer the phone and women make calls. Xiaokang is also seeking to change, to change the problem of sexual orientation that troubles him, or he is looking for another possibility, trying to find his true self. But in the end, he didn't answer the phone that had been ringing for a long time, he left, and continued to return to his depressed, no-exit life.
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