Cinema of the World

Ming-liang Tsai - Ai qing wan sui AKA Vive l'amour (1994)

Plot: The film focuses on three city folks who unknowingly share the same apartment: Mei, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-ang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.

Quote:

VIVE L'AMOUR; A New Apartment as Empty as Its Occupants

Michelangelo Antonioni's brooding meditations on urban alienation may not be fashionable in America right now, but they have exerted a powerful influence on modern Asian cinema. "Vive l'Amour," Tsai Ming-liang's haunting second feature, is a virtual homage to the Antonioni films "La Notte" and "Eclipse." As in those early-60's masterpieces, the gleaming anonymous architecture and thoroughfares of a booming metropolis (here it is contemporary Taipei) frame the blank spiritual lives of characters who drift through the city in a state of melancholy disconnection.

The Taiwanese film has a wonderfully evocative central conceit. Mei-mei (Yang Kuei-mei), a chic young real estate agent, misplaces the keys to a vacant duplex apartment in a spanking new high-rise. Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a shy young man who is later revealed to be gay, finds the keys and begins living there surreptitiously. When Mei-mei is not tidying up the apartment and communicating by cellular phone with her employer, she, too, uses the place, for trysts with Ah-jung (Chen Chao-jung), a man she picks up in a luncheonette for casual sex.

For much of the film, the characters co-exist in the apartment without confronting one another. On one occasion, Hsiao-kang, to avoid being discovered, hides under a bed on which Mei-mei and Ah-jung make love. A situation that would normally be played as a bedroom farce is treated instead as a portrait of erotic angst, with overtones of "No Exit." For when Hsiao-kang eventually meets Ah-jung, he falls secretly in love with him.

Both the director and his characters are obsessed with the glossier surfaces of modern life. In this languidly paced film, the camera lingers on the apartment's spare, immaculate interiors as intently as on the characters' grooming habits. One of the apartment's attractions is a whirlpool bath in which the characters luxuriously immerse themselves. But as the film makes graphically clear, solitary sensual gratification is no palliative for an underlying sense of emptiness. No sooner has Hsiao-kang finished his bath than he slashes his wrist in a half-hearted suicide attempt.

In crucial ways, all three characters are not what they seem. Ah-jung tells Mei-mei that he works "in imports and exports," which seems like stretching things for an unlicensed street peddler who has to hide from the police. Hsiao-kang, when alone, acts out an elaborate autoerotic fantasy of himself as a woman. Mei-mei, who seems crisp and tough throughout most of the film, is ultimately revealed to be seriously depressed.

At times, the symbolism becomes heavy-handed. Hsiao-kang has a job selling cremation containers. And when the movie takes a digressive tour of an enormous mortuary, the metaphor seems pushy.

The end of the film aspires to a grand, Antonioni-like gesture with an extended tracking shot of the unhappy Mei-mei walking through a desolate urban park. Blending allusions to "L'Avventura," "La Notte," and "The Passenger," the scene ends with a prolonged, highly emotional closeup of Mei-mei.

But Yang Kuei-mei is no Jeanne Moreau or Monica Vitti. Where the performances in Antonioni's films balanced the symbolism with a feeling of character, "Vive l'Amour's" trio remain abstract gossamer figures in a moody urban reverie.
Stephen Holden, NY Times, March 23, 1995






http://www.filesonic.com/file/883915781/Tsai.Ming.Liang.Vive.L.Amour.1994.mkv

subs english
no pass

Ming-liang Tsai - Ai qing wan sui AKA Vive l'amour (1994)

Plot: The film focuses on three city folks who unknowingly share the same apartment: Mei, a real estate agent who uses it for her sexual affairs; Ah-jung, her current lover; and Hsiao-ang, who's stolen the key and uses the apartment as a retreat.

Quote:

VIVE L'AMOUR; A New Apartment as Empty as Its Occupants

Michelangelo Antonioni's brooding meditations on urban alienation may not be fashionable in America right now, but they have exerted a powerful influence on modern Asian cinema. "Vive l'Amour," Tsai Ming-liang's haunting second feature, is a virtual homage to the Antonioni films "La Notte" and "Eclipse." As in those early-60's masterpieces, the gleaming anonymous architecture and thoroughfares of a booming metropolis (here it is contemporary Taipei) frame the blank spiritual lives of characters who drift through the city in a state of melancholy disconnection.

The Taiwanese film has a wonderfully evocative central conceit. Mei-mei (Yang Kuei-mei), a chic young real estate agent, misplaces the keys to a vacant duplex apartment in a spanking new high-rise. Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a shy young man who is later revealed to be gay, finds the keys and begins living there surreptitiously. When Mei-mei is not tidying up the apartment and communicating by cellular phone with her employer, she, too, uses the place, for trysts with Ah-jung (Chen Chao-jung), a man she picks up in a luncheonette for casual sex.

For much of the film, the characters co-exist in the apartment without confronting one another. On one occasion, Hsiao-kang, to avoid being discovered, hides under a bed on which Mei-mei and Ah-jung make love. A situation that would normally be played as a bedroom farce is treated instead as a portrait of erotic angst, with overtones of "No Exit." For when Hsiao-kang eventually meets Ah-jung, he falls secretly in love with him.

Both the director and his characters are obsessed with the glossier surfaces of modern life. In this languidly paced film, the camera lingers on the apartment's spare, immaculate interiors as intently as on the characters' grooming habits. One of the apartment's attractions is a whirlpool bath in which the characters luxuriously immerse themselves. But as the film makes graphically clear, solitary sensual gratification is no palliative for an underlying sense of emptiness. No sooner has Hsiao-kang finished his bath than he slashes his wrist in a half-hearted suicide attempt.

In crucial ways, all three characters are not what they seem. Ah-jung tells Mei-mei that he works "in imports and exports," which seems like stretching things for an unlicensed street peddler who has to hide from the police. Hsiao-kang, when alone, acts out an elaborate autoerotic fantasy of himself as a woman. Mei-mei, who seems crisp and tough throughout most of the film, is ultimately revealed to be seriously depressed.

At times, the symbolism becomes heavy-handed. Hsiao-kang has a job selling cremation containers. And when the movie takes a digressive tour of an enormous mortuary, the metaphor seems pushy.

The end of the film aspires to a grand, Antonioni-like gesture with an extended tracking shot of the unhappy Mei-mei walking through a desolate urban park. Blending allusions to "L'Avventura," "La Notte," and "The Passenger," the scene ends with a prolonged, highly emotional closeup of Mei-mei.

But Yang Kuei-mei is no Jeanne Moreau or Monica Vitti. Where the performances in Antonioni's films balanced the symbolism with a feeling of character, "Vive l'Amour's" trio remain abstract gossamer figures in a moody urban reverie.
Stephen Holden, NY Times, March 23, 1995






http://www.filesonic.com/file/883915781/Tsai.Ming.Liang.Vive.L.Amour.1994.mkv

subs english
no pass