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.
Special screenings
Details
Director
Hou Hsiao-hsien
Production year
2001
Country
TW, FR
Original title
Qian xi man bo
Length
104 min.
Language
none
Subtitles
ENG
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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