What Time Is It There? (2001)
What Time Is It There?
”A Taipei watch salesman falls for a woman leaving for Paris and changes all the clocks to Paris time.”
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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.
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A watch salesman meets a young woman soon leaving for Paris and becomes infatuated, so he begins to change all the clocks in Taipei to Paris time.
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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 River
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.
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.
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
When You Finish Saving the World
The debut of the star Jesse Eisenberg in directing feature films, also as the screenwriter, "When You Finish Saving the World" brings all the essence of "Lady Bird," Greta Gerwig's Oscar-nominated film: a teenager (Finn Wolfhard) feels lost in life while performing musical acts online about subjects of his age, while his mother (Julianne Moore), the director of a shelter for women victims of abuse, doesn't see him as an engaged person. That's where the worlds of the two collide: the boy starts trying to become more politically aware, not just to impress his mother, but also to catch the attention of a girl (Alisha Boe) at school; meanwhile, Moore's character starts treating one of the boys in the shelter, the son of a victim, as if he were her own child. It's a painful drama that, despite some simplifications and the natural irritation that arises from insufferable characters (what can you expect from Eisenberg, right?), has a soul and a heart to address the complexity of mother-child relationships.
A Million Miles Away
A biopic about Jose Hernandez and his path from a farm worker to becoming an engineer and an astronaut. A tale of perseverance, community and sacrifice to accomplish a seemingly impossible dream.
Strange Way of Life
Short film by the talented Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar (The Skin I Live In, Parallel Mothers), "Strange Way of Life" is quite different in terms of narrative from what we see in his other English-language short, "The Human Voice," but it shares the same essence: to provoke and question the language of cinema. While the other one is about the confining (and even existential) nature of characters, this one questions the limits of the western genre. How? Following in the footsteps of "Brokeback Mountain," it tells the love story of two men (Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal) in an environment that usually portrays toxic masculinity. In half an hour, the Spanish filmmaker builds an engaging narrative, discussing betrayal, fear, and redemption, in a story that keeps us hooked until its conclusion. And a word of caution for those watching it in theaters: it might be a good idea to skip the one-hour interview presented at the end. Apart from being too long, Almodóvar ends up providing information that interferes with the overall experience.
