The Green, Green Grass of Home

Hou's third feature is as 'cute' and 'wholesome' as the worst government-sanctioned Taiwan movies of the 1970s, but it contains clear signs of the Hou to come in its long-take mise-en-scène and in its handling of child actors. Pop star Kenny Bee (allowed only one song) plays a temp teacher in a small town primary school in southern Taiwan. During his brief tenure he dumps a bossy, egocentric girlfriend from Taipei, falls in love with a sweet local girl, sorts out a delinquent in the making and launches an environmental movement to clean up the river and restock it with fish. Sitting through some of it takes nerves of steel, but there are shots and even some sequences capable of raising cinephile goosebumps.