Hou Hsiao-hsien is no stranger to HIFF. The Taiwanese filmmaker won the festival's award back in 1995 with "Good Men, Good Women," a film-within-a-film based on a real couple who fought in the anti-Japanese resistance on the mainland during World War II but, as leftists, were persecuted during Taiwan's "White Terror" campaign of the 1950s. ‘Millennium Mambo’
is no easy escapeHIFF FACTS
By Gary C. W. Chun
gchun@starbulletin.comA contemporary sideplot of the film concerned the harassment of the lead actress via anonymous faxes containing excerpts of her diary, stolen in the 1980s when she was a bar hostess involved with a gangster.
Two films and six years later, the main character in "Millennium Mambo" finds herself in a similar situation. The film dispassionately observes this teenage girl's plight, one apparently common to other young Taiwanese women.
Vicky (Shu Qi) quietly relates what her life was like 10 years ago -- our present -- idly hanging out with her friends and being stuck in a loveless relationship with a jealous and immature boyfriend. Despite the film's rather lighthearted title, the new millennium holds no promise for her.
"Millennium Mambo"
Screens at 6 p.m. Sunday at Dole Cannery 9, and 6:45 p.m. Wednesday at Waikiki 1
Because her slacker boyfriend would rather stay at home and work on his DJ skills and play video games, she gets a job as a dancer at a hostess bar and finds emotional comfort and friendship from a gangster who frequents the bar.
"Millennium Mambo" is a contemplative film. While characters fill the frame with the anger, frustration and brief moments of happiness of their young, unformed lives, the camera is stationed at a medium distance, content to either pan back-and-forth or rack focus between foreground and background as the characters move, taking in all the action in one long, unbroken take. Hsiao-hsien wants the audience to view this girl's life from a distance and with some perspective, much like the narrator 10 years into the future.
He also shows great faith in Shu Qi to carry the film. She has one of those great, expressive faces and the kind of physical grace the camera loves. While the film ends on an extended still shot of a deserted Japanese town street in the dead of winter, with crows flying about, it represents a glimmer of hope for Vicky's future, as long as she nurtures a friendship she with a particular Japanese boy. Her visits to his hometown of Yubari (which just happens to host its own film festival) is her ticket out of a bleak life.
"Millennium Mambo" is a deceptively simple but effective drama with a young actress on the rise.
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