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Three Times
Zui Hao de Shiguang [THREE] Taiwan, 2005, 131 min, Color , 35mm In Mandarin with English Subtitles Directed By: Hou Hsiao-Hsien PRODS: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Hwarng Wern-Ying SCR: Chu Tien-Wen CAM: Mark Lee ED: Liao Ching-Song MUS: Lim Giong, Li Kuo-Yuan, K-B-N, The Platters CAST: Shu Qi, Chang Chen, Mei Fang, Di Mei, Liao Su-Jen, Chen Shih-Shan, Ko Yu-Lun |
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Shu Qi, in tight, lime-green satin pants, cleans up the pool hall and impulsively pots a couple of balls; on the soundtrack, The Platters are singing "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes"... Three Times is Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s most seductive film in some while, full of small, magical moments which capture fleeting pleasures and transient emotions. Hou says that the film’s Chinese title (it translates as "The Best of Times") has, for him, the specific nuance that evanescence is precisely what makes experiences special: we cherish memories because they come from a past that has vanished. Each of the film’s chapters all three starring Shu Qi and Chang Chen and with the same supporting cast is set in a different year. The pool hall turns up in 1966, and it’s easy to figure out that this represents an episode from Hou’s own adolescence: Chang Chen is a kid on his military service, chasing Shu Qi from one pool-hall to the next. In 1911 (the year of China’s first revolution) she’s a tea-house courtesan worrying about her prospects of marriage and he’s her regular customer, an activist who visits Taiwan between fund-raising trips to Japan and dangerous forays into China; he turns a blind eye to her needs. And in 2005 she’s a bisexual rock chick (actually a singer who keeps having epileptic episodes) and he’s a photographer; both are involved with other people when they begin their dangerous liaison. Fashions in "love" change through the years, Hou suggests, but love stays the same. Selected Filmography: The Boys from Fengkuei (83), A Summer at Grandpa’s (84), The Time to Live and the Time to Die (85), Dust in the Wind (86), A City of Sadness (89), The Puppetmaster (93), Good Men, Good Women (95), Flowers of Shanghai (98), Millennium Mambo (01), Café Lumière (03) Sponsored By Fairchild TV |
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