Who's Hou?

Ben Walters reports on the new film by one of Taiwan’s best-kept secrets, director Hou Hsiao-Hsien.

Aug  4 2006

Hou Hsiao-Hsien has been at the forefront of Taiwanese – and indeed world – cinema for over two decades, yet his recognition in the UK has been decidedly patchy. Coming to prominence in the early '80s with autobiographical projects like 'A Summer at Grandpa's' (1984), he won prizes at Berlin in 1985 and Venice in 1989, where his groundbreaking treatment of a notorious episode in Taiwanese history, 'A City of Sadness', netted him the Golden Lion.

His production rate is prodigious – 13 features in 22 years – but neither distribution nor box office have always been easy to secure, perhaps in part due to the restrained pace and increasingly complex yet understated narratives of his work. Despite the consistency of his output, British cinemagoers have often been left asking, 'Who's Hou?'

Following the high-profile release of 'Café Lumière' last year, that looks set to change with 'Three Times'. Celebrated at last year's Cannes, 'Three Times' originated as a portmanteau of sort-of love stories with two other directors. Following funding complications, however, Hou finally decided to realise the project alone.

The punning English title is apt: taking place in three distinct eras from the past century of Taiwan's history, the segments also reprise many of the same concerns. Hou had always planned to direct the first part, 'A Time for Love', about the repressed courtship between a national service conscript and a billiard hall hostess in 1966.

He also retained the period (1911) and setting (a 'flower house') of the second, 'A Time for Freedom', which traces the relations between a courtesan and a young political activist engaged in the Chinese revolutionary movement (Taiwan was at the time occupied by Japan).

The third part, 'A Time for Youth', was completely reinvented: set in Taipei, 2005, its main character – a singer with a panoply of ailments and a complicated, unfulfilling sex life – was based on the explicit blog of a real-life musician.

The film could be seen as a recapitulation of the main phases of Hou's career: autobiographical stories of Taiwan in the '50s and '60s like 'A Summer at Grandpa's' (1984); works more overtly engaged with political history like 'Flowers of Shanghai' (1998); and, most recently, films about aimless contemporary youth like 'Millennium Mambo' (2001) and 'Café Lumière'.

'One of my friends got it right,' Hou says with a smile, looking spry in an Agnès B T-shirt that insists 'J'aime le cinema!'. 'In middle age this is an attempt to recreate something of my more youthful work.'

Hou's approach is fragmentary and has even been described in terms of 'de-dramatisation': rather than conventional narrative consistency, each story offers a series of impressionistic episodes from its central relationship; meaning arises from telling details, repetitions and alterations in behaviour.

In a way, the film offers a fragmented portrait of shifting Taiwanese society. 'In each period, for instance, the relationship between men and women is different,' Hou notes. 'In 1911, the scope for developing relationships had many constraints. In 1966, the whole point was to pursue marriage, whereas in the final episode society is very different. The position of women has changed – they have professions, a stronger position in society, much more autonomy. And bisexuality is also something that can be explored now.'

There are formal differences between the segments: the 1911 story is entirely interior with an often static camera and intertitles instead of dialogue (Hou says his actors couldn't be expected to master the classical dialect spoken at the time); by 1966 there's more natural light and several exterior excursions; and 2005 has a greater variety of internal and external locations as well as some very zippy camera mobility, reflecting Hou's sense of an accelerating pace in his homeland.

'You do sense a much faster pace now. For instance, often in relationships you have contact first and then you develop love.' Is that something he regrets? 'It exists. I wouldn't say regret,' he smiles. 'There's a certain envy…'

With 'Flowers of Shanghai' and 'Café Lumière', Hou began to look beyond Taiwan, and for his next film he's come even further afield. Currently shooting in Paris until the autumn, 'Orsay' is about a Chinese student working for a Parisian mother (Juliette Binoche) and her acute outsider's perspective on contemporary France.

Hou acknowledges that the main impetus for this departure was practical, but has also found artistic benefits. 'People who have the funding say, "Could you come here and film this theme?" And I think "Yes, that could be interesting and could be a challenge." And this in turn will shed light for me on Taiwanese society. When you're filming in an alien environment you often get the wrong end of the stick, but it also opens you to a new view.'

Overall, however, his strong preference remains for working in Taiwan and engaging with its history, 'to portray politics through everyday life'. He hopes 'Three Times' might act as a sort of tasting menu and encourage wider interest in his country's various periods. Clearly he does not feel that the atomised experience of his contemporary characters – 'No past, no future, just a greedy present,' as the singer in 'A Time for Youth' puts it – is inevitable for his audiences. Thankfully, it certainly doesn't apply to his career.

'Three Times' is out now.

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