The Hole
This was my first Tsai Ming-Liang movie, and it made me fall instantly in love with his focus and style.
Apparently made as part of a series of movies from different directors around the globe as a focus on the upcoming new millennium, I would like to see the rest although I don't think I have. I know Hal Hartley has one that I would like to see as well.
This movie is all about contrasts. It's actually a musical, I guess you could say. The setting is Taipei where a large section of the city has been quarantined due to the outbreak of some strange pathology. The two main characters a young man and woman have both decided to remain in their apartment complex while everyone else has evacuated. It's apparent that this building and this life is all that they have. They don't seem to have any other family or friends that are terribly concerned with them. The man's apartment is directly above the woman's but they don't seem to know each other at all. It's always raining as well. It never stops. And sometimes bag of garbage can be seen falling as well. The complex is rather run down. And the rain coming in begins to soak the woman's apartment. She tries desperately at first to keep the place dry and the wall paper from falling off of the wall.
The movie is extremely laconic and almost all of the dialogue comes from the television, and even that isn't very often. The interactions are so few and so unusual that there isn't much talking. Just like real life can be.
Here's where it gets more interesting though. At the beginning of the movie a repair man comes to the apartment of the man. For some reason after he leaves there is a significant hole in the middle of the man's floor. He gets bored and picks away at it, forcing an interaction with the woman below. He pours things onto her and sticks his leg through. Interactions like this are about as interesting as it gets for people in such a sort of aimless situation like this.
Then we get to what really makes this movie great. It's that contrast I was talking about. A number of times during the movie, the woman is singing and dancing while a Grace Chang song plays on the soundtrack. She is wearing a gorgeous dress and looking as if she was in a big budget musical. She is still surrounded by the squalor of the apartment complex, but the surroundings turn into her stage and props. Eventually back up dancers join her to make it much more extravagant. Later the man joins her in one of the dance numbers, well dressed himself. The contrast of this against the rest of the movie is stunning.
We also find out that the strange disease affecting the area makes people being to act like cockroaches. Crawling around on their hands and knees close to the ground, hiding in dark wet places.
In the context of the movie, the final image of the film is one of the most stunning I've seen.
This movie also made me fall in love with Grace Chang, her music at least. I have yet to see any of her actual films. Her music is difficult to find here in the USA, I from what I've gathered is not that easy to find elsewhere either. Which seems strange since she was apparently such a big star. If anyone knows where I can get a CD with her music on it, let me know!!
Rating: 10/10