This is a quiet, caring, patiently observed film about that most difficult thing to make into interesting drama: the everyday lives of basically decent and normal people, in this case an on/off again couple as played by Chin Tsai (why wasn't in she more films, I wonder, she makes a good impression here) and Hsiao-Hsien Hou (usually a director, also quite excelleng), who have to navigate the loss of and seeking employment, heavily flawed family (a debt-addled dad for her, wayward and ultimately tragic brother for him), and what atmosphere a city like Taipei, so bustling and at night neon-drenched and polluted and seemingly full of (as Yang and company show) self-interested middle class people. It gives empathy for everyone, and let's scenes breathe.
I think it's understandable if this isn't someone's cup of tea, but on the other hand it isn't perhaps a keen idea to see this before the other Yang heavy-hitters like Yi Yi or Brighter Summer Day: this has somehow even *less* incident than that - if anything, at least for what is about the first 45-50 minutes, Yang as a storyteller reaches the apex of George Costanza's pitch of a "show about nothing... what did you do this morning?" I got up and went to work" "There's a show" on Seinfeld - but I was invested in these people precisely because Yang doesn't gum up things with anything approaching cliche or convention.
It's stripped down so that that actors can bring their own life and lived-in experience (Lung's weariness and discontent, a face Hou brings in almost every other scene and, whether conscious or not, adds immeasurably to this being as great and pained and sad as it is), and he and the DP find dozens of wonderful ways to shoot this city, in interior and exterior, so that we can understand innately what it's like to be there, in those office rooms, the bars, that bedroom, then on those streets and the FUJI-FILM backlit roof) without calling much attention to the style. It's seamless, meditative, yet totally natural at the same time.
And that ending... it made me feel like had I seen this when I was younger (ie my first big bursts of making short films in college) it would have inspired me to want to get a camera and shoot something like this. In a strange way it is inspirational in that it's not necessary to add the same old Screenwriting 101 stuff you get taught so often. This is more about capturing a mood, of being on a street at night with just a couple of those overhead lights and that solitude and aloneness. It didn't happen all at once but I loved this one.
