Directed by Tsai Ming-liang
Written by Tsai Ming-liang, Tsai Yi-chun, and Yang Pi-ying
Starring Yang Kuei-mei, Lee Kang-sheng, and Chen Chao-jung
Runtime: 1 hour and 58 minutes
Opens in NYC at Metrograph Friday, March 14; screening in Philadelphia at Lightbox Film Center on Friday, April 1. More dates here.

by Dan Santelli, Staff Writer and Social Media Coordinator

“Our society is all messed up, right? So we have a lot to talk about.”

But nobody does talk about it or much of anything, and this cuts to the mournful core of Vive L’Amour, Tsai Ming-Liang’s nearly wordless 1994 drama about a triad of taciturn, unemotive characters drifting through life in ever-changing Taiwan. Previously only available stateside via a long out-of-print Fox Lorber DVD (in a non-anamorphic transfer, no less), Film Movement’s classics division has bestowed upon us a pristine 2K restoration, allowing Tsai’s modernist frames to stoke the mind and the senses like never before.

To describe the plot of Vive L’Amour is to almost do a disservice to the movie and the reader. Tsai’s work rarely hinges on propulsive narratives or, to be frank, much narrative at all. It tends toward the conceptual, with Tsai taking basic ideas and then toying with them in accordance to his core themes and obsessions, often setting the action against the backdrop of rain-soaked urban Taiwan. (Curiously, there’s very little rain in Vive L’Amour, but water remains a recurring symbol regardless.) The film opens with the possibilities of sex and death. Real estate agent May Lin (Yang Kuei-mei) and street peddler Ah-jung (Chen Chao-jung) cruise each other, while salesman Hsiao-Kang, after stealing a key from the lock, sneaks into the apartment where the two go for casual sex as he attempts to slit his wrists. All three covertly share the apartment throughout the feature, as Tsai shines a light on alienation, erotic fantasies, and, in an amazing final scene, emotional recognition and release.

In reviewing Brian De Palma’s Dressed to Kill on Letterboxd, Scarecrow Video’s Kevin Clarke wisely remarked “every Brian De Palma movie is like an echo chamber of itself and other Brian De Palma movies.” This sentiment also applies to Tsai’s work, as he continually works through ideas related to sexual angst and repression, aching modernity, and urban loneliness, churning them out time and time again but always finding some way to deepen or reframe them. And despite the characters often failing to find happiness or have their sexual desires fully met, Tsai’s work is often deeply erotic while withholding release to some degree. Eroticism lingers in the stasis of those elongated shots in which nothing seems to happen but that actually relay the underlying feelings of loneliness and sexual longing that pain the characters. It’s these obsessive long takes that do the work of affording the small details and minute gestures a monumentality that would be lost with formal kinesis or dramatic emphasis. Given his predilection for the aesthetics of slow cinema, Tsai’s work is undeniably an acquired taste. But I’ve acquired it.

Vive L’Amour may only be Tsai’s second feature, but he articulates the haunting, pervasive sense of isolation that trouble the characters, some of whom are more conscious of it than others, with a master’s sleight of hand. On a broader scale, his vision of Taipei as modern and alienating fits within the framework of other works from the Taiwanese New Wave, an array of films from the 80s, 90s, and 2000s that questioned modernity and national/cultural identity. His long-take strategy grants viewers time to discern how Tsai utilizes impersonal spaces – such as city sidewalks, vacant parks under construction, and a modern apartment teeming with unadorned walls – to articulate the chilly ethos of urban dwelling, the isolation that can afflict someone even as their surrounded by people, and how those lost in the sea of ennui negotiate it. Tsai’s contemporaries Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang also employed intricately staged long-takes and ruminative narratives, but Tsai’s work (here and elsewhere) treads into the avant-garde more than either ever dared.

One of the defining traits of Tsai’s feature films is the presence of Hsiao-Kang, played with soulfulness by the sad-faced Lee Kang-sheng. Hsiao-Kang first appeared as a cram-school dropout in Tsai’s debut, Rebels of the Neon God, and most recently as an ailing loner in Tsai’s most recent feature, Days. The character’s profession may change with each passing film, with forays into film projection (Goodbye Dragon Inn), adult film acting (The Wayward Cloud), and sales work (Vive L’Amour), but, at heart, Lee’s Hsiao-Kang remains the same lonely soul wandering through urban landscapes wrestling with angst (often sexual), occasionally dropping into the lives of others and other times just going about his way. (It’s worth noting that the wares he peddles here are cremation containers.)

If you’ve seen Lee grow up over the course of Tsai’s career, then a revisit of Vive L’Amour may come with some added resonance. First-timers, however, will likely register the sense of compassion Tsai has for the actor. Consider an early scene wherein Hsiao-Kang resigns himself to wallflower status in the midst of his colleague’s shenanigans inside an anonymously designed office. Hsiao-Kang may lurk at the edge of the frame, but the frame geometry draws our attention to him. There’s a clinical aura to Vive L’Amour, but there’s also a removed sense of empathy and attentiveness, and that comes to the fore in the scenes set within the safe, womblike confines of the apartment. The accentuated sound design – sometimes underscoring nervous breaths and rustling of clothes, other times highlighting the surrounding environment – also privileges us to an intimate understanding of Hsiao-Kang’s headspace, as well as that of the other characters and the city that envelops them.

Neither his most accessible work nor his most austere, Vive L’Amour marks a transitional step in the development of Tsai’s career. It’s replete with the pensive languors that would become his trademark, as well as dashes of perverse comedy (including some watermelon play that predates The Wayward Cloud) and a deeply felt emotional undercurrent. It’s this last part that lingers beneath the stillness and silence, slowly crescendoing before finally materializing in an impossibly moving final scene that sees emotional recognition, flowing tears, and acceptance. It’s the moment the movie has been building to and the effect it has on viewers may mirror what we see on the screen. Everyone remains alone and the conversations that could’ve taken place never transpire, but Tsai refutes the deterministic urge with this honest burst of emotion that suggests anyone can crawl out of their funk and live in the moment, no matter how bleak or confusing or impenetrable the modern world may be.