REBELS OF THE NEON GOD

Tsai Ming-liang emerged on the world cinema scene in 1992 with his groundbreaking first feature, REBELS OF THE NEON GOD. His debut already includes a handful of elements familiar to fans of subsequent work: a deceptively spare style often branded “minimalist”; actor Lee Kang-sheng as the silent and sullen Hsiao-kang; copious amounts of water, whether pouring from the sky or bubbling up from a clogged drain; and enough urban anomie to ensure that even the subtle humor in evidence is tinged with pathos.

The loosely structured plot involves Hsiao-kang (Lee), a despondent cram school student, who becomes obsessed with the young petty thief that smashes the rearview mirror of his father’s taxi cab. Hsiao-kang stalks the handsome thief Ah-tze and his buddy Ah-ping all night, through the film’s iconic arcade (featuring a telling poster of James Dean on the wall) and other locales around Taipei, and ultimately takes his revenge.

REBELS OF THE NEON GOD is a remarkably impressive first film that hints at the promise of its director: a talent confirmed by Tsai’s equally stunning second feature, VIVE L’AMOUR. Though showing such diverse influences as the French New Wave, Wong Kar-wai’s early films—and, yes, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE—Tsai’s film is most remarkable for introducing his startlingly unique vision to world cinema.

“Just about everything in Tsai’s filmography can be traced back to this directorial debut: The appearance of Lee Kang-sheng, his ever-present muse. His patient camera. His obsession with un-encounters. Tsai’s early poetry of urban gloom marks a rupture in modern cinema, a chasm onto a new mythos of moviemaking concerned with delicately disclosing the meaning behind the cyclical rituals people adopt in an age when their dreams are commodified and their character conferred the status of cipher.” – Nicolas Pedrero-Setzer

“One of the great modern films about big cities and the mostly unacknowledged psychic toll of living in them.” – Matt Zoller Seitz