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Millennium Mambo (2001)
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien Hou Xiaoxian
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Vicky (Shu) came to Taipei as a teenager and lurched into an affair with the ultra-possessive Hao-Hao (Duan), who lived for DJ-ing but thought it would be uncool to play records for a living. She decided she'd leave him when her savings ran out but in the meantime gravitated into the orbit (not the bed) of small-time gangster Jack (Kao), who treated her like a best friend. But when she finally moved into Jack's place, he had a sudden money crisis and disappeared somewhere in Japan. This differs from Hou's earlier accounts of women around male riff-raff (Daughter of the Nile, the present-day parts of Good Men, Good Women) in two striking ways. First, it looks back at the present from a point ten years in the future, rendering it strange and distant. Second, Vicky is seen not as a marginalised onlooker but as a young woman coming into bloom, learning by experience how to build her own identity. The film is a virtual portrait of Shu Qi, in much the way that Godard once made films as pretexts for capturing the moods of Anna Karina. Extremely beautiful, as hypnotic as its trance-techno soundtrack, and (like Flowers of Shanghai) very, very druggy.Author: TR
Cast & crew
Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien Hou Xiaoxian
Producer: Hou Xiaoxian, Eric Heumann
Cast: Shu Qi, Jack Kao, Duan Chunhao, Jun Takeuchi, Ko Takeuchi full cast
Duration: 120 mins
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