Not to let anyone walk into this unawares: a voice from the audience understandably commented the somewhat contrived, but cinematographically superbly rendered catharsis of this movie, when son and father make out in the dark room of a smudgy sauna club, thus: `O Lord, will you not spare me anything today?'
`He Liu' is a disturbing tale of urban disruption, solitude and rot, not told but evolved in a series of carefully composed real-time-scenes circling about a family afflicted by a sudden and scary medical condition befalling the Son after he took a plunge in polluted river: Their harrowing quest for a cure just serves to depict the utter hopelessness of traditional (Chinese and universal) values in modern society. The disruption of the individual has gone to a degree that it takes the audience about 45 minutes to even get the fact it is watching the plight of familially related protagonists. We watch people engaged in homosexual intercourse without feeling they're gay: In their context, homosexuality is a token of disorientation as much as the porn-watching of the mother whose lover is as little interested in her physically as her husband: Satisfaction is beyond reach for every inhabitant of this chill world - a place not geographically limited to Taipeh but given as a state of present time urban society.
This, of course, is the gist of about 95% of all the movies with a message. What Ming-liang Tsai manages is a bit more special: Underneath the phenomena of isolation there runs a counterpoint of unexpected solidarity - father and mother, still without ever talking to each other again, are immediately available in a matter of course way as soon as their son's condition deteriorates: `family' is still an extant institution, a should-be, could-be, would-be harbor not yet ready for the ice storm that has seized the world.
Redeveloping many of the same elements, this movie compares favorably with Ang Lees more expansive and considerably less focused `Yin shi nan nu' (Eat Drink Man Woman) from 1994 and is somewhat echoed in his more accomplished `Ice Storm' from 1997, the same year when `He Liu' was made.
`He Liu' is a disturbing tale of urban disruption, solitude and rot, not told but evolved in a series of carefully composed real-time-scenes circling about a family afflicted by a sudden and scary medical condition befalling the Son after he took a plunge in polluted river: Their harrowing quest for a cure just serves to depict the utter hopelessness of traditional (Chinese and universal) values in modern society. The disruption of the individual has gone to a degree that it takes the audience about 45 minutes to even get the fact it is watching the plight of familially related protagonists. We watch people engaged in homosexual intercourse without feeling they're gay: In their context, homosexuality is a token of disorientation as much as the porn-watching of the mother whose lover is as little interested in her physically as her husband: Satisfaction is beyond reach for every inhabitant of this chill world - a place not geographically limited to Taipeh but given as a state of present time urban society.
This, of course, is the gist of about 95% of all the movies with a message. What Ming-liang Tsai manages is a bit more special: Underneath the phenomena of isolation there runs a counterpoint of unexpected solidarity - father and mother, still without ever talking to each other again, are immediately available in a matter of course way as soon as their son's condition deteriorates: `family' is still an extant institution, a should-be, could-be, would-be harbor not yet ready for the ice storm that has seized the world.
Redeveloping many of the same elements, this movie compares favorably with Ang Lees more expansive and considerably less focused `Yin shi nan nu' (Eat Drink Man Woman) from 1994 and is somewhat echoed in his more accomplished `Ice Storm' from 1997, the same year when `He Liu' was made.