French Maid Makeup And Hair

Watermelons be eaten at a given time and also

[What Time Is It There? ]

DIRECTION: Tsai Ming-Liang
PRODUCTION: Fra / Tai - 2001 - Drama
LENGTH: 116 '
CAST: L ee Kang-Sheng, Chen Shiang-Chyi, Lu Yi-Ching, Miao Tien, Chen Chao-Jung, Cecilia Yip, Jean-Pierre Léaud
Screenplay: Tsai Ming-Liang - Yang Pi- Ying

PHOTOGRAPHY: Benoit Delhomme
DESIGN: Timmy Yip
ASSEMBLY: Chen Sheng-Chang
SOUND: Du Tuu-Chih

Plot

Hisao-Kang, selling watches on the street, he meets a girl who, after some hesitation, sells the watch of his father, who died recently. Impressed by the young, Hisao learns that this is about to leave for Paris ...

Reviews

Taipei - Paris: the thread of loneliness
Tsai Ming Liang contemporary alienation continues its journey but this time, in the usual picture of loneliness and anxiety, it conducts a melancholy vein, that softens the dark despair of REBELS OF THE NEON GOD or in the river (his masterpiece, in my opinion) and the apocalyptic nightmare of THE HOLE, and gives way to a less sarcastic humor than usual, more tender and light: the 'infatuation Hisao-Kang, a woman he meets by chance, given an obsession with light tones and delicate and at times idiotic the crying of the young in Paris is almost sweet and has a length of the catastrophic one that marked the final LIVE L'AMOUR, the film which earned the film the Golden Lion in Venice. The author goes on to portray any humanity and always wandering people dominated by their own ghosts and madness, people inevitably only occasionally crossing the Other casually and in circumstances in which effusions are also exchanges of chips, episodes, stolen moments when illegal immigrants, which are necessary in long sequences, silent and heavy as the pain you should remove, a loneliness that, if sudden bursts, it becomes insanity: the protagonist's mother, upset by the death of her husband, rely on superstitious rituals before exorcise the absence, after a gruesome dinner with his ghost, with a searing desolation un'avvilente masturbation (can not come to mind the vibrator mother's de RIVER, sad substitute for face to ward off the distance of a husband who practiced gay circles). Yet this time, even under a touching final visual poetry, the tone is much more pessimistic and less reconciled: while the boy rule all the clocks in Taipei Time of the French capital, creating a little fantasy with a woman who has shown care and kindness, the young lives Paris adventures that seem to have a curious relationship with what was experienced by Hisao Taipei (if he sees the four hundred SHOTS Truffaut, she met Jean Pierre Léaud, if you have a sexual encounter with a girl from Hong Kong, he has a relationship with a prostitute and, again, will be his father, deceased, to recover the suitcase from the water with her). The director continues to prefer the horizontal look of things, representing the moments that normally take place away from the camera, with his taste, as Antonioni, for a cold geometry of visual composition and shooting a real everyday life, that of small gestures that mean only in reality and not in a logical Tramice be respected at all costs, in Tsai things are never proposed or even suggested, we simply are. While the obsession with liquid dominates as usual (urinary incontinence of the protagonist, the constant sound of flowing water, aquarium lights when you move the huge fish that we had already seen or the river), and the dialogues are studiously rarefied (the feelings of the characters, played by the usual actors fetish, does not occur with words but with tears silent, astonished eyes, small ordinary gestures) the environments are beautifully photographed by Benoit Delhomme, alternating hot and amber tones of the interior of the house, to acceccanti white exterior, blue bruises to the non-places of the metropolis. It 'not easy for most movies that are in circulation but that Tsai is a further confirmation of a true talent, a poetic authentic and mature, a masterful film which would make it a crime not to pay tribute with a visit .

Luca Pacini [from personal blog]

The Picture of youth affected, including surreal humor and loving human understanding. Hsiao-kang
sells watches on the streets of Taipei. A few days after the death of his father knows the young Shiang-Chyi, about to leave for Paris, Hsiao-kang, obsessed mother who awaits the return of the spirit of her husband, lives in the memory of the girl and therefore rule all of its clocks to keep time in the French capital. Meanwhile, in Europe, Shiang-Chyi seems mysteriously connected to live events Hsiao-kang ...
The film is a tribute to cross "the four hundred blows," said lead author (who does in fact buy a cassette of the film by Truffaut to the protagonist, that if the watch at night, and then in Paris, brings together the Girl with Jean-Pierre Léaud) and is a sharp and sympathetic description of a childhood crush that far, but certainly afflicted. Laconic as ever, Tsai Ming-liang crosses the loneliness of his characters without making them ever talk, outlining minimal lives (and believable) than through the details of behavior than by surreal moments. The traumatic event has already happened, what is left are the absurd palliatives that fill the void. Built on a linear time, neat, flat on the succession of moments only apparently always the same, where acute suffering of lonely flow as a natural flow, "What Time Is It There?" is illuminated by an instinctive sense of humor dall'affettuosa and understanding for a world that seems made up of separate entities, but where Paris and Taipei are much closer than they look. "

[from film.tv.it]

[The taste of watermelon ] ... by the same director

More than a sex comedy about the meaning of an altarpiece body. Fascinating and disturbing
The seller of watches and the girl in Taipei trip to Paris What Time Is It There? are back. Back home, she wanders through an empty city, gripped by a drought without remedy while he is now an actor in porn movies, made in the building where both live. But it does not meet or speak (almost) never, in the latter, extreme tableau vivant (and chantant) by Tsai Ming-Liang. Solipsistic and solitary wanderings from nouvelle vague, zero communication, sexuality desemantizzata. As in The Hole, poor but brilliant choreography and update the numbers sung decline of musicals in Hong Kong in the 50s Hollywood style. More than a sex comedy - the watermelon is not the eel mariniana, despite the alluring advertising campaign - an altarpiece in the sense of the body. That "work", and beautiful, fetish actor Lee Kang-Sheng. Deprived, not depraved. More than you should taste the watermelon taste to talk about the body, represented and heard crying. It takes a lot of humor, to prepare the author's vision, capricious as the cloud of the original title. A final mortuary so as to be interpreted as a live l'amour.

Raffaella Giancristofaro

shelf department: Cinematerapia

Soundtrack: The Raconteurs - Store Bought Bones