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VIVE L’AMOUR
1994
Director
Tsai Ming-liang
Starring
Lee Kang-sheng
Yang Kuei-Mei
Chen Chao-jung
Lu Yi-ching
Runtime
118 minutes
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When a burial-plot salesman (Lee Kang-sheng) steals a key out of a lock, a triangle of longing emerges between himself, a street vendor and a real-estate agent - taking form in a series of clandestine erotic encounters inside the vacant apartment which they're all illegally occupying.
After his debut feature REBELS OF THE NEON GOD delivered youthful exuberance and queer desire in hectic, color-saturated Taipei, Tsai Ming-liang reunited with his acting muse Lee for a project that would take Taiwan's 'Second New Wave' to lofty new heights. The winner of the Venice Golden Lion in 1994 – as decided by a jury headed by David Lynch! – VIVE L'AMOUR features less than a hundred lines of dialogue, instead emphasizing noisy traffic intersections, clacking high-heels, bleeping tills and erotically labored breathing. This story of a bizarre love triangle finds Tsai developing his own masterful, utterly distinct style distinguished by lovelorn longing, perverse deadpan comedy, and elegantly composed long-takes that chew on bright blue telephone boxes and neon-lit night markets. Tsai's highly mesmerizing approach results in one of his most haunting, sexy and accessible portraits of urban alienation. Writer Nicholas de Villiers perfectly summed it up when he titled his book about 'sexual disorientation in the films of Tsai Ming-liang' Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy.
"His community of solitary beings poke about the spaces of Tsai-ville, driven by secret needs and not-so-secret ones like desire. His spaces are ever-shifting homes – in the organic animal mode more than the razing human – spaces with new purposes, that shape as much as they are shaped, brought into being under Tsai's patient eye." - Nicholas Rapold, Reverse Shirt
"Loneliness here is always interwoven with real estate – not a typical theme for an auteur, but Tsai makes it his own by elevating his enclosed spaces, often abandoned or their ownership fraught, to the level of costars." -Travis Jeppesen, Artforum
"Striking and beautiful VIVE L'AMOUR remains one of the key modernist works of contemporary cinema. Working principally without dialogue–with a feeling for both modern architecture and urban despair that often recalls Michaelangelo Antonioni–it gathers force slowly but builds to a powerful and devastating finale." -Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
After his debut feature REBELS OF THE NEON GOD delivered youthful exuberance and queer desire in hectic, color-saturated Taipei, Tsai Ming-liang reunited with his acting muse Lee for a project that would take Taiwan's 'Second New Wave' to lofty new heights. The winner of the Venice Golden Lion in 1994 – as decided by a jury headed by David Lynch! – VIVE L'AMOUR features less than a hundred lines of dialogue, instead emphasizing noisy traffic intersections, clacking high-heels, bleeping tills and erotically labored breathing. This story of a bizarre love triangle finds Tsai developing his own masterful, utterly distinct style distinguished by lovelorn longing, perverse deadpan comedy, and elegantly composed long-takes that chew on bright blue telephone boxes and neon-lit night markets. Tsai's highly mesmerizing approach results in one of his most haunting, sexy and accessible portraits of urban alienation. Writer Nicholas de Villiers perfectly summed it up when he titled his book about 'sexual disorientation in the films of Tsai Ming-liang' Cruisy, Sleepy, Melancholy.
"His community of solitary beings poke about the spaces of Tsai-ville, driven by secret needs and not-so-secret ones like desire. His spaces are ever-shifting homes – in the organic animal mode more than the razing human – spaces with new purposes, that shape as much as they are shaped, brought into being under Tsai's patient eye." - Nicholas Rapold, Reverse Shirt
"Loneliness here is always interwoven with real estate – not a typical theme for an auteur, but Tsai makes it his own by elevating his enclosed spaces, often abandoned or their ownership fraught, to the level of costars." -Travis Jeppesen, Artforum
"Striking and beautiful VIVE L'AMOUR remains one of the key modernist works of contemporary cinema. Working principally without dialogue–with a feeling for both modern architecture and urban despair that often recalls Michaelangelo Antonioni–it gathers force slowly but builds to a powerful and devastating finale." -Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader