The River
” A young man's neck pain reveals his parents' dysfunction in a polluted river setting. ”
Tsai Ming-liangSoon at your home
The River (1997)
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Why watch this film?
Winner of a Silver Bear at the 1997 Berlin Film Festival, 'The River' is the third feature film from Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang ('Rebels of the Neon God', 'Vive L'Amour'), and possibly his most pessimistic. The director continues his exploration of loneliness and modern anxieties, now depicting disconnection and miscommunication, repressed sexuality and both physical and spiritual pain. It's a bittersweet and contemplative tale of lives adrift in polluted rivers.
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A young man develops severe neck pain after swimming in a polluted river; his dysfunctional parents are unable to provide any relief for him or themselves.
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From the same director
Rebels of the Neon God
This is the first feature film of director Tsai Ming-liang, considered one of the greatest exponents of the Second Wave of Taiwanese cinema. 'Rebels of the Neon God' is one of the most powerful cinematic debuts of the decade, a visually poetic exploration of the pessimistic future and existential emptiness of urban youth of its time. It is possibly the most accessible movie in the director's filmography, marked by contemplation, acerbic irony and the anguish of a country undergoing a trembling transformation.
Vive L'Amour
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang ("Rebels of the Neon God"), "Viva el Amor" (“Vive L'Amour”) is the winner of the 1994 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion. His second film continues on the same line of themes as its predecessor and eventually successors: exploring modern loneliness, isolation, and existential emptiness in a bittersweet world of erotica and gaps between seemingly inexorable bodies. Told with barely any dialogue but loaded with sexual desire, the film mesmerizes with an atmosphere where characters exist like ghosts in their own worlds.
The Hole
Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang's filmography was already notable for its contemplative explorations of solitude, marginalization, eroticism, and existential emptiness in the modern world, in movies like "Viva el Amor" and "El Río." However, with "The Hole," the filmmaker took these themes to a new - and peculiar - level. Selected at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival - where it won the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) Award - this movie stands out for its almost absolute absurdity, but when executed as a musical, such absurdity escalates to the plane of acid surrealism. It is a strange mix of humor and melancholy whose idiosyncrasy has no equal, and which would see its stylistic successor in "The Wandering Cloud" years later.
What Time Is It There?
The already remarkable filmography of Tsai Ming-liang (‘The Hole’, ‘Rebels of the Neon God’) includes, in his fifth film, the fetish actor of the French New Wave, Jean-Pierre Léaud (‘The 400 Blows’). In ‘What Time Is It There?’, the director wanders between Taiwan and France, melancholic tragedy and acidic comedy, to once again explore loneliness, but also the desire for belonging and connection frustrated by distance and time. The nature of the latter, specifically, obsesses the director and the protagonist (again Lee Kang-sheng), in a meditation on its passing and what it drags with it.
The Wayward Cloud
With "The Wandering Cloud" (more commonly known among the Hispanic audience, for obvious reasons, as "The Taste of the Watermelon"), Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang revisits the aesthetic explosion of the musical that he had previously experimented with in "The Hole", while reuniting two characters from the director's previous filmography, Hsiao-kang and Shiang-chyi (who meet in "What Time Is It There?"), performed by the actor and actress fetish of the director, Lee Kang-sheng and Chen Shiang-chyi. It is an unusual and eccentric film, for presenting such a cheerful energy as a counterpoint to the filmmaker's thematic interests, such as communication breakdown and loneliness. Here, in this case, it is the open expression of sexuality as resistance to the existential and spiritual void of modernity, metaphorically expressed in the form of a drought that drives the population of Taipei to substitute water for watermelons. Selected at the 2005 Berlin Film Festival, where it received a Silver Bear and the Prize of the International Federation of Cinematographic Press (FIPRESCI).
I Don't Want to Sleep Alone
After the disturbing musical eccentricities of "The Drift Cloud" (or "The Taste of the Watermelon"), Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-Liang returns to a more "conventional" drama (or whatever that means for his filmography) with "I Don't Want to Sleep Alone", which features his favorite actor, Lee Kang-sheng, in a dual role. Selected at the 2006 Venice International Film Festival, the movie maintains the contemplative pace and visual repetition typical of the filmmaker, in a new exploration of loneliness and longing for belonging or, at least, being accompanied in the passing of time.
Face
It is a musical film directed by Tsai Ming-liang commissioned by the Louvre Museum and, in some way, it could be his '8½', as it explores (among other things) the process of filmmaking through the story of a Taiwanese filmmaker (played by his favorite actor, Lee Kang-sheng) who travels to France to make a movie at the Louvre, based on the myth of Salome. 'Rostro' ('Visage') is also inspired by the cinema of François Truffaut and, in fact, includes in its cast actors who worked with him, such as Jean-Pierre Léaud ('The 400 Blows') and Jeanne Moreau ('Jules et Jim'). It is perhaps, both, the most grandiloquent and beautiful film of the director, but also the most impenetrable for those who are not his avid followers. Selected at the Cannes Festival in 2009.
Days
Winner of the Teddy Award at the Berlin Film Festival 2020 (and selected in other international festivals that year), ‘Days’ captures the typical themes in Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang's filmography: isolation, urban loneliness and a longing for human contact. However, it also suggests a possibility of salvation through intimacy, the only beauty that can deny the darkness of an existential void. As beautiful as it is sordid, it is certainly a filmmaker in absolute control of his unique style.
Stray Dogs
Awarded at the Venice Film Festival in 2013, "Stray Dogs" could be described as Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang's absolute embrace of loneliness, already a well-explored theme throughout his previous filmography, but here taken to the absolute margins of society, to follow those who live outside of it. The director begins to abandon modern reality to provide glimpses of an apocalyptic loneliness in what, at the time, was said to be his final film (it wasn't). A contemplative – and therefore, disturbing – portrayal of the most desolate indifference.
Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Selected at the 2003 Venice Film Festival -where it deserved the International Federation of Film Critics (FIPRESCI) award- 'Goodbye, Dragon Inn' is a contemplative ode to the experience of cinema itself: the act of watching a movie, the people, even people through a movie, life itself and memory, too. Defined by long takes, sparse dialogue, almost no camera movements and the idiosyncratic humor typical of director Tsai Ming-liang ('The Hole', 'What Time Is It There?'), the film also touches on several of the thematic axes in his filmography, such as isolation, distance, and the losses that come with the passing of time.
The Night
The Chinese-Malaysian filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang ("Goodbye, Dragon Inn") is a master of contemplative cinema, exploring themes such as marginalization, loneliness and repression. At first, these themes may not seem very obvious in 'Liang Ye Bu Neng Liu', whose title evokes almost everything we see: one night in 2019 in Hong Kong, filmed by the filmmaker walking through its streets. Yet, there are small everyday dramas that reveal themselves in its stillness, revealing the beauty of the city's true essence to those who accept the invitation to look with patience and an open heart.
Drama
Son of Monarchs
After his grandmother’s death, a Mexican biologist living in New York returns to his hometown, nestled in the majestic monarch butterfly forests of Michoacán. The journey forces him to confront past traumas and reflect on his hybrid identity, sparking a personal and spiritual metamorphosis.
Unclenching the Fists
In a small mining town in North Ossetia, Russia, a young woman feels suffocated by her family, living between rejection and love: a complicated life, to say the least. From there, the young Ada (Milana Aguzarova) begins to plan her long-awaited escape. Directed by Russian Kira Kovalenko, Unclenching the Fists won the main prize in the Certain Look section of the Cannes Film Festival, offering an insightful look into Russian society, mainly with regard to the women of the region.
The Last Film Show
From director Pan Nalin (Samsara), The Last Film Show is a semi-autobiographical film whose premise immediately calls to mind the classic Italian film Cinema Paradiso. The story follows a small rural Indian boy, Samay (Bhavin Rabari), who goes to the cinema for the first time and falls in love with it. Against his father's wishes, he decides to skip school and go back to the cinema again and again, where he becomes friends with the projectionist and learns more about making films. He and his friends decide to try to learn about light to project films, but gradually, Samay realizes that following his dream means leaving behind what he loves. With its nostalgic childlike discovery of something you love for the first time, plus countless references to filmmakers such as Tarkovski and Malick, The Last Film Show is an ode to the act of growing up and learning, with a subtle comment on the alleged accessibility of cinema as an art form for everyone.
Fanfic
According to the dictionary, fanfic is the abbreviation of the English term "fanfiction," which is a fiction created by a reader or viewer who, being a fan of a literary, film, theatrical, television or animation work, creates a continuation to the story or recreates it using their creativity. And that is the heart of the Polish romance Fanfic. Although the movie does not talk about anyone recreating a story, it does tell of two teenagers who come to love each other and need to find a way to express this love to the world, perhaps recreating this story with a lot of creativity. In a polished manner, reminiscent of comic book language, the movie speaks of love in youth with creativity, although it cannot escape those clichés that plague the genre to make it more enjoyable.
