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Millennium Mambo (2001)

  • A young woman looking back at the camera as she goes through a dark passageway in Millennium Mambo 2001
  • A young woman in red homewear reading in bed in Millennium Mambo 2001
  • A young woman in a white bra smoking a cigarette as her boyfriend kisses her on the neck
  • A young woman staring at the glass in a red-lit room

“Sordid yet transcendent, bathed in neon haze and set to a relentless techno-beat, Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “Millennium Mambo” — the tale of a teenage Taipei club girl — is not only the most pop movie the great Taiwanese filmmaker has ever made but, intermittently, among the most astonishingly beautiful.” – New York Times

A stylish and seductive submersion into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei, Hou’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.

Runtime
1h 45m
Year
2001
Director
Hou Hsiao Hsien
Format
DCP
Language
Mandarin with English subtitles
Categories
  • Assisted Listening