 |
| Michiko Hada and Tony Leung in Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flowers of Shanghai (Taiwan, 1998). |
To watch a film by Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien is to partake in a hypnotic, slow motion cinematic dance. To the casual observer, nothing is happening. Relations unfold slowly, minutely, with a passing word here, a subtle glance there, weaving a web of intrigue and emotion lying taut over the seemingly placid surface of the screen. To some it’s torture, but for those able to give themselves over the Hou’s dreamlike worlds, his is a cinema that can make you see whole new dimensions in the world on screen.
I’m not as familiar with Hou’s oeuvre as I’d like to be, mainly because his early work in particular is very hard to get in the West. Recently, however, I was lucky enough to see his 1998
Flowers of Shanghai (
Hai shang hua) on the big screen, courtesy of the wonderful Melbourne cinematheque.
