VIVE L'AMOUR Movie Review

Aiqing Wansui

In crowded modern Taipei, a lonely real-estate agent (Yang Kuei-mei) uses one of her vacant high-rise apartments for an ongoing affair. She's unaware, however, that a young gay man (Lee Kang-sheng) who finds one of her keys has taken to living there himself. Carefully monitoring her comings and goings, their “relationship” becomes a poignant parody of the eternal dilemmas inherent in sharing space with another, as well as a not-so-funny look at the paradox of alienation and loneliness in even the most crowded of cities. Director Tsai Ming-liang's deadpan, ironic comedy of urban angst, sex, and desperation sports as spare and clean a design as the modern apartment building in which much of the film takes place, but its deliberate pace and elliptical structure demand rapt attention. Grand Prize Winner, 1994 Venice Film Festival.

NEXT STOP … Lonesome (1929), When the Cat's Away, Two or Three Things I Know About Her

1994 118m/C TW Yang Guimei, Chen Zhaorong, Li Kangsheng; D: Tsai Ming-Liang; W: Tsai Ming-Liang; C: Pen-jung Lioa, Ming-kuo Lin. VHS FXL