Directed by Tsai Ming-liang
For the past 35 years, director Tsai has distinguished himself as one of the most tirelessly brilliant filmmakers in the world with his achingly empathetic, beautifully crafted films about love, longing, sex, and urban alienation, the through line between them his subtly expressive muse, Lee Kang-sheng. See three works by a modern master here.
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Goodbye, Dragon Inn
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang | 82 mins | 2003
Like the Royal Theater in The Last Picture Show and the title movie house in Cinema Paradiso, the Fu-Ho is shutting down for good. A palace with seemingly mile-wide rows of red velvet seats, the likes of which you’ve seen only in your most nostalgic dr... -
Vive L'Amour
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang | 118 mins | 1994
Tsai’s second feature is a masterful evocation of urban loneliness and longing, quietly devastating even in its forays into something like slowed-down slapstick. A love triangle takes shape when three people—including a repressed funerary salesman pla... -
The Hole
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang | 89 mins | 1999
It’s the close of the millennium and Taipei has emptied out with the onset of a mysterious virus, but Lee Kang-sheng and Yang Kuei-mei lag behind among the ruins, where maybe a last chance at communication lies through a breach between their apartments...