Taiwanese cinema is alive and well, with the likes of Ang Lee (Eat Drink Man Woman), Edward Yang (Yi Yi), and Hou Hsiao-hsien (Daughter of the Nile) all chipping in. One of the best of the new lights shining in Taiwan is Tsai Ming-liang, director of the present film, What Time is it There? (2001).

Historical Background: Tsai Ming-liang (recall that by Chinese naming conventions, surnames usually precede given names) is among the up-and-coming directors working in Taiwan. Tsai was actually born in Malaysia in 1957 but moved to Taiwan when he was twenty and studied at the Chinese Cultural University there. After graduating in 1982, he gathered experience working in theater and writing screenplays for both films and television. His first feature film as a director was Rebels of the Neon God (1992), which depicted disaffected young people, with uncompromising realism. His second film, Vive L'Amour, used a vacant apartment in Taipei as a device for connecting together three lonely city dwellers. Vive L'Amour won the Golden Lion at the 1994 Venice Film Festival. His third film, The River, examined the notion of psychosomatic ailments through the story of a young man who develops a peculiar neck problem after being asked to play the part of a corpse in a movie. The River took the Silver Bear at the 1996 Berlin Film Festival. Tsai's fourth film, The Hole, provided a comedic take to an end-of-the-world scenario relating to an epidemic sweeping through Taipei. The Hole was noteworthy for the use of several surreal musical interludes and earned Tsai a FIPRESCI award from the Cannes Film Festival in 1998. What Time is it There? came next and was Tsai's most accomplished film up to that time, revealing a director who had gained confidence and command of his techniques and approach. Tsai has also made several shorts and videos.

The most evident influence in Tsai's work is Michelangelo Antonioni, with whom Tsai shares a preoccupation with the theme of loneliness and isolation brought on by urbanization and the technological onslaught. One can also see influences of Fassbinder and Truffaut and Tsai pays specific homage to the latter director in What Time is it There?. Just as Truffaut used Jean-Pierre Léaud as his lead in an extended series of films, Tsai has thus far utilized Lee Kang-Sheng as his lead in all of his feature films. In What Time is it There?, Tsai has his protagonist developing an interest in French films, incorporates a clip from The 400 Blows, and then uses Léaud (at his present age) in a cameo appearance. Tsai's camera technique, on the other hand, follows the distinctly Asian tradition favored by such masters as Yasujiro Ozu (1903-1963) (see, for example Floating Weeds). It is the style of tradition Japanese theater and uses mainly static camera placements rather than pans or tracking shots. The result is a deadening of action but an invitation for viewers to assume a more meditative approach to experiencing the events of the film. This will be difficult for some Western viewers used to video games, music videos, and high-paced action films from Hollywood.

The Story: The film opens on a listless, old man (Miao Tien) alone in a darkened room, puffing on a cigarette with barely enough energy to exhale. When he dies, he leaves behind a wife (Lu Yi-Ching) and son, Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), to come to grips with the loss as best they can. The lonely mother of the family is exceedingly superstitious and spends her time awaiting and encouraging her husband's return through reincarnation. She forbids her son to kill even the cockroach they catch running through the kitchen. When the son nevertheless feeds the cockroach to his pet fish, Fatty, she declares in anguish, "That cockroach could be your father!" The mother becomes obsessed with taping off every source of light in the apartment, knowing her dead husband's preference for darkness. She also sets a place for the father at dinner each evening and ladles out food for him incessantly.

Hsiao-kang has his own obsession – with time. He sells wristwatches from a street display on the sidewalks of Taipei. Soon after his father's death, the watch vender is approached by a young woman, Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi), who wants to purchase a watch with dual-time capacity. There are a couple of rows of watches in the display case with the requisite capability, but Shiang-chyi takes a particular shine to the one that Hsiao-kang is himself wearing. He declares that it would be bad luck for her to purchase his watch because he is in mourning, but she insists, wheedling and cajoling him on the phone and in person until he relents. She is on her way to Paris and wants to be able to also keep track of what time it is back in Taipei. As a thank you gesture, she gives the young man a parting gift of a piece of cake.

Though the totality of their contact has been limited to just a few spoken lines, all concerned with the watch, Hsiao-kang becomes obsessed with the young woman who is now wearing his watch, though she is now far away in Paris. His fixation first takes the form of resetting all of the watches in his display case to Paris time – seven hours displaced from that in Taipei. Later, he does the same with the clocks in a shop for children and the clock on the kitchen wall in his home. The mother assumes that the abnormality in the clock is a sign from her deceased husband. Later, he goes after the clocks of the subway system, one outside a movie theater, and another atop a high tower.

As Hsiao-kang travels about the city, he and we encounter both humorous and symbolic moments. Hsiao-kang's bizarre clock-changing activities gain him the attention of a chubby young man, who turns out to be a bit of a stalker and flasher. Hsaio-kang pursues the young man into a men's room after he steals a clock from Hsaio-kang. That turns out to be a mistake when the young man suddenly appears in the buff with just the clock covering his genitalia. In another scene in Taipei, Hsaio-kang encounters a giant Ferris wheel running backward, as though to represent the distortion of time that Hsaio-kang has effected.

Other times, Hsiao-kang creates humor of his own. He is determined, for some unexplained reason, not to leave his room at night when nature calls and thus ends up peeing into the most unlikely of containers – a plastic bag or a water bottle. When his boss shows him a new "unbreakable" watch model, Hsiao-kang gets carried away testing out the watchmaker's claim, banging the watch incessantly against a post.

Hsiao-kang's lonely and neurotic life in Taipei is intercut with that of Shiang-chyi, in Paris. Why she is there is never explained. She is struggling with the language, has no acquaintances, and is every bit as lonely and isolated in Paris as Hsiao-kang is back in Taipei. She seems not to have any specific activity in which she is involved. She does a lot of lying awake at night, as though still stuck on Taipei time. Other times, she wanders the streets or sits alone in cafés, avoiding the searching eyes of equally lonely men. In one scene, she meets a friendly man (Jean-Pierre Léaud) on a bench in a cemetery, presumably the one in which Léaud's old mentor, Truffaut, lies buried.

The lives of our two main protagonists seem somehow to be synchronized, presumably an influence of the dual-time watch that each has owned. The loneliness of the two young people, as well as that of the mother, comes to a head at the same time. In Taipei, Hsiao-kang accepts the invitation of a young prostitute to join him in his car. Meanwhile, at home, his mother masturbates with a pillow while thinking about her deceased husband. In Paris, Shiang-chyi makes friends with another Asian woman (from Hong Kong) and the two snuggle and kiss a bit. None of these essentially cold experiences provide the respective participants with anything more than the briefest of respites from their respective feelings of isolation. All three fall asleep, alone and disconsolate.

Themes: The most evident theme of this film, as well as Tsai's oeuvre in general, is that of loneliness and isolation, particularly in a modern urban setting such as Taipei. Neither the father nor the mother communicates with their son and lonely young people pass one another by or copulate aimlessly, without making genuine psychological contact. There's a kind of New Wave feel to this film, with the emphasis on relationships and interior struggles, even if the cinematic style is distinctly Asian. There's also a kind of Jacques Tati-like approach to humor that you won't find in Antonioni's angst-laden works. Everything in What Time is it There? is simultaneously funny and sad, but one is left with the feeling that life's little burdens can never overwhelm us so long as we maintain our basic sense of humor. Another issue of the film is coincidence or synchronization of fates. It's not so much a matter of supernatural intervention, by Tsai's calculation, as the commonality of agendas among people. Shiang-chyi, Hsiao-kang, and his mother all reach a crescendo of loneliness at about the same time because each is responding to the same basic human need on about the same schedule.

Production Values: There's no reason why it would be obvious from the plot description above that the story, such as it is, has transpired almost entirely free of dialog. I imagine that the entire dialog for this film could be easily typed onto a single side of a sheet of letter-sized paper. There's also very little music or ambient sound, making this film an exploration of the power of silence. It is through the lack of dialog and other sound that Tsai most establishes the isolation of his characters. The mother and son barely communicate. Hsiao-kang and Shiang-chyi, both lonely urbanites as the film opens, are unable to converse outside the context of the vendor/customer relationship. In fact, Hsiao-kang's main confidant in life is Fatty, his pet fish, and his mother's insistence that his father's soul has found its way into Fatty even spoils that limited source of communication for Hsiao-kang.

What's special about Tsai's script for this film and for his work in general is the delicate balance he maintains between melancholy and humor, even if it's largely deadpan black humor. Tsai has found a delicious recipe for a bittersweet confection. Longing has its humorous aspect and Tsai is about the business of playing the one off against the other. In Tsai's hands, the heartache of alienation is poignant, but never reaches the level of agony.

Tsai's camera technique is quite distinctive, by Western standards. Those who have seen a lot of Asian films will have seen it before. Tsai plants his camera and then choreographs the action to transpire smoothly in front of it. The individual shots are long by Western standards, which allows the action to unfold at its own pace. The camera plays the part of an impassive, neutral observer, which in turn invites viewers to assume a more contemplative stance in relation to the film. A lot depends on the skill of the performers in this find of approach. The cinematography, by Benoît Delhomme, utilizes some interesting and appealing lighting features. Frame composition is also a strong point of the film. There's a scene in which the oversized white fish performs so perfectly for the camera that one is left marveling at how the crew could have pulled this off.

Lee Kang-sheng may not yet rank with Tati or Keaton, but he is nevertheless gifted at subtle comedy. He was a non-professional when he began working with Tsai, but after five films or so together, I don't suppose that label still applies. His reactions are wonderfully natural and understated. Chen Shiang-chyi is highly effective in her Paris scenes, credibly expressing all the alienation and loneliness the part demands. Lu Yi-Ching, as the mother, complements Lee nicely in their joint scenes, manifesting a determined neuroticism. In a film with precious little dialog, the actors were left almost exclusively with facial expression and gestures to convey the inner turmoils of their respective characters.

Bottom-Line: This is a highly effective film, but only for the right kind of potential viewer. It's not simply an issue of a viewer's film "sophistication" or experience with "art films." The relevant requirement is an ability to forgo plot and tune into ambiance and feeling. There is very little story to this film and exceptionally sparse dialog and sound. I didn't personally find it boring in the least. In fact, it was riveting in its own way. It demands a contemplative approach from a viewer, which is not a strong point for Western audiences. If you've got that contemplative bent, then by all means check out this wonderful little treat from Taiwan. If you bore easily in the absence of a storyline, stay away. The film's running time is 116 minutes. It is in Mandarin with English subtitles but the subtitles are especially easy to read since there is very little dialog.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan:

Chungking Express
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
Eat Drink Man Woman
The Emperor and the Assassin
Fallen Angels
Farewell My Concubine
Hero
In the Mood for Love
Raise the Red Lantern
Red Sorghum
Road Home
Shanghai Triad
The Story of Qiu Ju
Temptress Moon
Together
To Live
The Women From the Lake of Scented Souls
Yi Yi

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age