Millennium Mambo (2001)
Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien Run Time: 105 min. Rating: R Release Year: 2001
Starring: Doze Niu Cheng-Tse, Duan Chun-hao, Jack Kao, Jun Takeuchi, Shu Qi
Country: Taiwan, France
Language: English, Japanese, Mandarin
About the film:
Winner, Technical Grand Prize, 2001 Cannes Film Festival
A stylish and seductive submersion into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei, director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s much-misunderstood marvel stars Shu Qi (The Assassin) as an aimless bar hostess drifting away from her blowhard boyfriend and towards Jack Kao’s suave, sensitive gangster.
Structured as a flashback to the then-present from the then-future of 2011, it’s a transfixing trance-out of a movie, drenched in club lights, ecstatic endorphin-rush exhilaration, and a nagging undercurrent of ennui.
“Hou may be the greatest living filmmaker you’ve never heard of”
About the filmmaker:
Hou Hsiao-hsien is a film director, screenwriter, producer and actor who has established himself as a leading figure in world cinema and of Taiwan’s New Wave cinema movement. After graduating from the National Taiwan Academy of Arts, he trained as an assistant director to filmmaking veterans Li Hsing and Lai Cheng-Ying, and later formed partnership with cinematographer Chen Kun-Hou. His films have been awarded top prizes from prestigious international festivals such as the Venice Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, and Cannes Film Festival, where six of his films have been nominated for the Palme d’Or. He made his directorial debut with the film Cute Girls in 1980, and followed up with acclaimed features including A Time to Live, A Time to Die (1985), A City of Sadness (1989), The Puppetmaster (1993), Flowers of Shanghai (1998), Millennium Mambo (2001), and The Assassin (2015). Through his innovative storytelling and work as a producer for emerging artists, he has helped shape a whole new cinema consciousness in Taiwan.
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