Millennium Mambo
Hou Hsiao-hsien / TW, FR, 2001 / 104 min.
Exceptional, dream-like neon journey through night-time Taipei. This visually overwhelming portrait of the Asian ‘Nothing Generation’ centres on the magnetic Shu Qi and is driven by a pulsating electro soundtrack.
Headstrong Vicky is a barmaid in Taipei caught between a jealous, possessive boyfriend and a gangster. In 2011, she looks back on how her life was ten years ago; we experience this through a stupefying haze of trance techno, lush slow-motion and scintillating, iridescent images, all undercut by currents of boredom.
For his first feature film since the stunning costume drama Flowers of Shanghai, Hou Hsiao-hsien again collaborates with his regular cameraman, Mark Lee Ping-bin, who had just finished shooting Wong Kar Wai's In the Mood For Love and recycled enchanting images from that film: cigarettes are orange flecks in the deep blue of the club where Vicky spends her nights. It’s here that she meets her protector, a benign gangster with Buddhist tendencies (Jack Kao, a regular in Hou's films).
The magnetic Shu Qi plays Vicky as distant and self-destructive, as if in a trance. The pulsating electronic music also doesn’t let go: Millennium Mambo won an award for best sound design at the Cannes Film Festival in 2001.
Screening on 35mm from the Eye collection.
This is part of
Special screenings
Details
Director
Hou Hsiao-hsien
Production year
2001
Country
TW, FR
Original title
Qian xi man bo
Length
104 min.
Language
Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, English
Subtitles
ENG or NLD
Format
35mm
Part of
2001
In its film programme 2001 – A Time Capsule, Eye Filmmuseum is marking the 25th anniversary of the year 2001 with a generous helping of nostalgia, screening 25 films that were released in 2001.
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