When A City of Sadness came out it was groundbreaking. Martial law had only been lifted a couple of years earlier, and nobody had been able to tell such stories on the big screen before.

#film #CityOfSadness #HouHsiaoHsien #Taiwan #cinema (1/5) 🧵

Watching #TheAssassin is like watching the river flowing down in autumn sunset. You were watching an object reflected in golden sunlight just above the surface of the water all the way on the right corner of your eye, you were mesmerized by the sparkling, undulating water and before you realized that the object was flowing down the river all the way to the left corner of your eye and one hour and forty minutes have gone by. Hou is the kind of director who's more interested in steam rising from the ornate bathtub than his actress's beautiful naked body. His decisions are so efficient, yet it conveys everything any costume melodramas convey, without corny tears, excessive expositions and phony intrigue. Sumptuously shot on film in full frame by Hou's regular cinematographer #MarkPinBingLee, The Assassin is rapturously gorgeous. #ShuQi looks amazing in her black Assassin's outfit. Marvelously elegant in its simplicity and subtlety The Assassin is a true beauty to behold. #houhsiaohsien

Wan and Huey are teenage lovers in a small mining town. After graduating middle school, they decide to go to bustling Taipei to earn money for their families. Wan takes a job at printing factory then later as a motorcycle delivery man while going to night school. Huey works as a seamstress. They befriend with billboard painter and his gang at a movie theater, hang out & drink sometimes. But life is tough and things never go the way you want. Hou's elegy to his adolescent times is full of stunningly beautiful moments - a train ride home, shy Huey taking off her shirt in a spur of the moment, grandpa's firecrackers, shipwrecked Chinese family in the army barracks, watching people fighting fire, drunken dad trying to lift a stone... It feels almost indecent to share these memories of Wan & Huey as intimately & vividly as I watch Dust in the Wind. But like past memories, Hou's treatment of these moments are so fleeting & democratic. Another Hou masterpiece. #houhsiaohsien #taiwanesecinema

Compared w/ Hou's City of Sadness, Good Men, Good Women is a much more complex film, both structurally & thematically. It starts out with a young actress Liang Ching with a troubled past as she prepares the role of Chiang Bi-yu, a real life character in a film version of GMGW, about a group of young Taiwanese idealists going over to the mainland China to join the resistance against Japanese in WWII. The bw version of film-within-film is scattered through out, giving the island nation's tumultuous history. It also loosely connects with the life of Liang in the present time who has been leading rather a decadent life. She is also haunted by the memories of her lover, a low level gangster who was murdered some years ago. There is obviously a larger context in play here - the nation's shameful past needs to be recognized in order to go forward. Complex, asymmetrical & enigmatic, yet richly rewarding, GMGW is the Hou film I was craving for. #houhsiaohsien #taiwanesecinema

Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996) - Hou
#HouHsiaoHsien #taiwan #JackKao #taiwanesecinema

City of Sadness (1989) - Hou
#HouHsiaoHsien #JackKao #TonyLeung #taiwan #taiwanesecinema

Café Lumière (2003) - Hou
#houhsiaohsien #taiwanesecinema #japan #tadanobuasano #yasujiroozu

Still bound by tradition and loyalty, Lung blows an opportunity partnering with his brother-in-law in Cali. Lung hates all these sinewy old connections in Taipei, but realizes running away is not the solution. You can't run away from who you are. Taipei Story is a terrific film with great characters charting growing pains of 30 somethings in Taipei, but also is very universal. HHH is amazing as Lung, a moody man with a chip on his shoulder. #taiwanesecinema #edwardyang #houhsiaohsien