As early as the beginning of the millennium, Chinese directors have set off a wave of cross-border filming, and Taiwanese directors are not far behind. The main reason is that these authors have established a firm foothold in the international film industry with their personal styles, so they can further satisfy their own needs. A long-cherished dream. Several Taiwanese directors like to use the name of "tribute" in multinational co-productions to attract attention. Hou Hsiao-hsien's two non-native language films paid tribute to Yasujiro Ozu and France's "Red Balloon", and Tsai Ming-liang's first multinational film " What time is there on your side" is a tribute to Truffaut's "The Four Hundred Blows". This was the focus of the promotion of this film back then. I still remember that Director Cai repeatedly emphasized the enlightenment and influence of the French New Wave on him, and even the original title of this film was "Seven to Four Hundred Strikes". This is the second time that Cai Mingliang has been selected for the Cannes competition. In the same year, there was also a "Millennium Mambo" by Hou Hsiao-hsien. Unfortunately, the last two Chinese-language films missed the Grand Prix and only won one technical award.
The first time I saw this film, I didn't have a deep feeling. Maybe I was not familiar with Truffaut or "The Four Hundred Blows" at that time, but now I re-watch it and realize that this is not a film that "pays tribute" to the French New Wave at all. Like Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang is good at integrating the so-called tribute concept into his personal style and narrative, creating works with distinct authorial labels. The film is organized by two narrative lines, one takes place in Taipei, Xiaokang's father dies, leaving him and his mother with invisible mental trauma; the other is the heroine Xiangqi who goes to Paris, France, she feels lonely in a foreign country. and anxiety, and Tsai Ming-liang's way of connecting two narrative lines and three characters with the time difference between Taiwan and Paris is truly amazing.
The Taiwan part was shot very well. Tsai Ming-liang vividly and interestingly presented the traditional Chinese folk culture and the different attitudes of the two generations after the death of a loved one. The script's dedication to details makes the story completely different from the extremely boring "Tsai Mingliang movie" in my impression, such as the mage doing things at home after the father's death, the father turning into a cockroach, and the mother getting up in the middle of the night to cook and cook, etc. Only those who are promiscuous in traditional Chinese culture can understand its beauty. The mother and son's different attitudes towards the death of their relatives lead to the core topic: loneliness, the mother can't get rid of the spiritual depression of her deceased husband day and night, and always hopes that he will return to her soul, while Xiaokang is afraid of the return of his father's dead soul, and shifts the fear to the opposite. In the transnational romance of a French heroine.
In contrast, the French part is too deliberate, repeatedly using similar plots to portray the heroine's language barrier and extreme self-protection xenophobic mentality in a foreign country, which is more rigid and monotonous, until the last scene of Hong Kong played by Ye Tong. When the tourists appeared, the sense of agility quietly surfaced. It seems that the director did not think clearly about the content to be filmed in this part of France. He just used the slogan to pay tribute to the French New Wave and to make the actor of "Four Hundred Blows" make a stunning appearance, but these did not seem to satisfy the audience.
Cai Mingliang dedicated this film to his deceased father, making the film semi-autobiographical. Xiaokang in the play has the shadow of the director himself. emotional distress. Despite being shrouded in a sense of loneliness and heaviness from beginning to end, Tsai Mingliang employs the techniques of classic silent films and the actors' performances, making the plot burst out from time to time with a contagious sense of humor. Rather than a work that pays homage to the French New Wave, it is more a modern silent film labelled by Tsai Ming-liang.
The actors' lines are few, but they don't feel dull at all, and the actors (especially Li Kangsheng) rely on Jacques Tati-esque body movements to mobilize the dynamism of the narrative, showing an extremely rich layer of humor. The most obvious is to imitate the classic scene in Harold Lloyd's masterpiece "Under Safety" - Xiaokang slows down the clock on the building. The other is that he met a fat man at a clock stand, then stole the clock and hid in the cinema, but was forcibly robbed by the fat man who followed him into the men's toilet. There was no dialogue between the two actors, but it was revealed. An extremely rare taste of retro comedy.
In the climax of the film, Cai Mingliang used parallel editing to present three characters in two different time and space side by side. They unanimously used sex to break through their emotional distress: the mother blasphemed her deceased husband's photo, Xiaokang hired a prostitute to solve her sexual desire, and the heroine far away in Paris experienced a night of tenderness on the same-sex body, the three people's inner depression and loneliness Feeling free and liberated at the same time.
This way of breaking the concept of jet lag and going straight to the heart of the characters continues to the stunning ending: a long-shot image depicts Taipei and Paris (Xiao Kang’s suitcase stolen by a prostitute drifts on the river in Paris), the living and the dead (the heroine). and Xiaokang's father) are perfectly integrated, and the last scene of the spinning Ferris wheel is unforgettable to this day. Death is not always a heavy topic under Tsai Mingliang's lens. The humorous effect created by the collision of cultural differences and authoring styles subtly dilutes the sense of depression, and makes people unable to help but fall into the contemplation of time and death.
View more about What Time Is It There? reviews
