Three Times

Three Times, the latest film from Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien is a lyrical, sensuous, but disappointing collection of three love stories set in 1911, 1966, and 2005. Marvelously performed by Shu Qi (Millennium Mambo) and Chang Chen, the film is both a retrospective of Hou's earlier work, a historical study of a culture, and a cogent statement about how social limitations affect each person's ability to relate. The message, however, that social restraints and modern technology hampers our ability to connect with one another is hardly new and, though depicted via Hou's gorgeous minimalism, was not enough to allow me to become emotionally involved with the characters.

Utilizing a traditional three-act structure, the mood of the film shifts from one time period to the other but the position of the women remains significant. The first segment is set in 1966 and is titled "A Time for Love". Uncharacteristically, Hou uses pop songs as background to the episode involving a chance encounter between Chen, an on-leave soldier and May, a young woman who works at various pool halls in different Taiwanese towns. The songs, repeated throughout the segment in the style of Hong Kong director Wong Kar-wai, are the Platters 1959 version of the thirties love song "Smoke Gets in your Eyes" and the 1968 hit by Aphrodite's Child "Rain and Tears". Chen becomes attracted to May after returning to visit a previous pool girl to whom he had written love letters while away in service.

Both watch each other carefully across smoky pool tables but are forced to leave and the remainder of the segment follows Chen as he attempts to track May in local pool halls across Taiwan. Though the first act contains some poetic moments of mutual attraction, it is mostly teasing in its elusiveness. May and Chen rarely speak and when they do, it is mostly about snooker. Nonetheless, Hou creates an atmosphere of tension as the lovers, perhaps like Taiwan itself at this time, must choose between remaining comfortable in their status quo or taking risks to engender more intriguing possibilities.

Set in 1911, act two, "A Time for Freedom", takes place in a concubine reminiscent of Hou's beautiful but claustrophobic Flowers of Shanghai. This 35-minute segment contains no dialogue, simply intertitles as in silent films and a tinkling piano in the background. Hou's ostensible reason for using this device is that he was unable to recreate the Taiwanese spoken language of the period. Though this is understandable, I doubt if many would have noticed and the absence of dialogue for that long a period of time comes across as an affectation. In this section, the two lovers from the first segment are now reprieved as master and concubine. The master is a political activist who writes articles promoting independence and provides financial help to a concubine pupil to allow her to achieve the status of companion.

Unfortunately, he does not address the issue his concubine is most concerned about - her own personal freedom, and he remains indifferent as she expresses her longings, again perhaps reflecting the political idea that Taiwan was not capable of independence at this time. The final chapter brings us to the modern world of freeways, cellphones, and text messaging. Named "A Time for Youth", the title of this segment is steeped in irony. No longer a subtext, the lack of communication fostered by modern technology reminds us of previous films by the director that eloquently conveyed the apathetic self-indulgence of modern Taiwanese youth, Goodbye South, Goodbye and Millennium Mambo. Unlike Goodbye South, Goodbye, which employed colored filters to highlight the garishness of modern Taipei, however, the city in the current film is now dark and foreboding.

The characters are a photographer, his girlfriend, a rock singer, and her own female lover. The singer is torn between these two lovers and I was frustrated by the intrusion of the female lover who acts as a brake on a fulfilling possibility between the two main protagonists, promised in the opening two segments. Though most likely true to the director's intentions, the final section feels artificial and cold and Three Times, while bearing flashes of Hou's brilliance, comes across as a cinematic exercise, an appealing concept that is ultimately unsatisfying.

I must admit that I fall asleep twice during the "Second Time", the 1911, but, still, the film has some things that can make it really interesting. Here are two of them: I specially liked the use of the light in the different stories. The light itself talks and tells us how the director feels about each of the periods he describes. Well, I can't talk that much about the second one but the 1966 one and the 2005 story are clear examples of this. The light in the first "time" is a warm light, an innocent one...the colors are soft and confident under that light. Like their love. On the other hand, the light from the final part is cold, blue, distant...it doesn't invite us to join the experiences the characters are living as the one in the first part does. I guess the director becomes the light in this movie...it's the point of view, the subjective eye in the film.

There is another thing I liked a lot in "Three times": the role of communication. In the first time, 1966, there are a lot of handwritten letters, few face-to-face words and delicate skin-to-skin and eye-to-eye contacts. In the Second part, it's mainly conversations. And in the 2005, when the characters are provided with a wide range of communication gadgets, communication seems even more difficult...(the scene with her crying in the motorbike and him asking if she's OK is extremely good in expressing this contradiction of the nowadays world: fast motorbikes, sms, e-mails, pictures...and still we are not able to express our most important feelings!) All in all, and in spite of the fact that the second part of "Three Times" might be too slow, there are a couple of interesting things to see in this film. However I must say that it is not a film for everyone and nor for every moment!

Interestingly enough, two elites of contemporary Chinese directors have presented their latest nostalgic works between 2004 and 2005. Compared to Wong Kar-wai's hybrid style and inscrutable cinematic codes in last year's 2046, Hou Hsiao Hsien's new masterpiece Three times in this year's Cannes is distinctly built on a three-episode structure and simply reminiscent of his chefs-d'oeuvre from his different golden ages.

The first episode "A time for love" is obviously associated with Hou's earlier works in 1980s. Set in Taiwan's snooker parlor in 1960s, a nostalgic aura infused with youthful vigor and adolescent impulse successfully recurred in Hou's stylish, experienced long-shots. The subtle relationship between the two main characters was getting clear with repetition of the Taiwanese old songs and western pops Smoke gets in your eyes, The Beatles' Rain and tears. This episode contains Director's real experiences and was rendered the most accessible of the three stories.

The second episode "A time for freedom" reminds me of his acclaimed classic Flower of Shanghai. Similar backgrounds, characters, chamber settings, fastidious costume designs refer to the identical tragic theme: Historically and emotionally lost. The surprise comes from the narration, which is dealt with in the form of silent movies. What struck me more is Shu Qi's weepy performance of those ancient elegies in an incomprehensible language.

The last episode "A time for youth" drew me back to the contemporary Taiwan in 2005. This episode is shockingly flooded with a variety of Generation-X's stuff such as e-mails, blog, cellar messages, trance music, digital camera, drugs, epilepsy etc., and also focused upon a group of aimless and hopeless younger animals, center of whom is a premature girl played by Shu Qi. Reminiscent of Millennium Mambo, also starring amazing Shu Qi as the key character, this story is loosely predicted on a girl whose relationship between her homosexual lover and a young male camera is morbidly and unapologetically intertwined. It's hard to conjecture why the director chose such an extraordinary story here as a representation of the contemporary society. Utilization of all kinds of most up-dated symbols has, however, proved his master touch in exactly presenting the loneliness, aimlessness and helplessness of the X-Generation living in the new century.

As the best actress in 2005's Golden Horse Award, Shu Qi's portrait of three women from different times is so convincing and laudable that she is totally competent for more difficult characters.

My girlfriend is always complaining that I rent gory, hateful Italian horror movies like 'Strip Naked For Your Killer' and 'Cannibal Holocaust', so I figured I'd switch it up and introduce her to the wild world of Hou. I should have stuck with 'Strip Naked...'! She complained the entire time that the film was too slow, that the characters were too vague and the whole thing, well, 'sucked'.

In my opinion, this was a graceful, magnificent film, but it is, what I like to call a 'Phantom Masterpiece' that is, a film which culminates a director's many obsessions, but doesn't really have that special punch that makes masterwork status unequivocal. I felt 'In the Mood For Love' by Wong Kar-Wai was a similar disappointment when compared to his 'true' masterpieces 'Happy Together', 'Chungking Express' and 'Fallen Angels'.

So, while you're right to expect a lot from this movie, don't expect a 'Flowers of Shanghai'.

Regardless, I found this film very fascinating, and one viewer's comment on IMDb about the film as a meta film is interesting, especially when you consider that framing shots of different actors in different times and places are virtually identical sequence to sequence. For instance, when a woman opens a letter, she's shot from exactly the same vantage point every time, regardless of the origins of the letter or herself. Its just too idiosyncratic to not be meaningful.

Also, a lot of this film is playfully back lit as characters are reduced almost to shadows for much of the action, however, as they move through the frame, light finds them and its really quite incredible.

If you are a true film fan, or a fan or Ozu, Haneke, Bresson, or Antonioni, you'll love this.

Tonight, a friend and I saw the critically acclaimed "Three Times" at a local theatre. The description that the theatre's site had posted is:

'The film features three different stories of love and memory through three time periods, 1966, 1911 and 2005. The first, "A Time for Love," hinges on the meeting of soldier boy Chen with pool hall hostess May and his subsequent search for her. The second episode, "A Time for Freedom," deals with a courtesan tending to a Mr. Chang during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. And the third episode, "A Time for Youth," centers on epileptic singer Jing who casually takes up with photographer Zhen while increasingly ignoring her female lover.'

Neither of us left the film understanding what the commotion could have been about. We both reasonably enjoyed the episode taking place in 1966 - it is sweet and innocent, and all the characters seemed happy. In the 1911 episode, the characters were all imprisoned by duty-bound roles, and happiness was not readily apparent. In the gritty modern 2005 final episode, all trace of innocence and happiness seemed to be whisked away in the detritus of the modern anonymous city.

The best scene for me was in the first part; in the sweet romance blooming between our two protagonists, Chen (played by Chen Chang) reaches his hand down slowly to clasp the hand of May (Qi Shu). But rather than enjoy many such touching scenes, I was left a bit puzzled by the dearth of interest, to me, in the rest of the film.

I had expected that Hsia-hsien Hou, cited as filming subtle scenes of beauty, would have cleverly used the three parallel histories, perhaps weaving them and interchanging them nonlinearly, or somehow relating them. All I saw was the coincidental use of two characters in love stories of three different eras. The film was slow; if it were entirely to have taken place in the 1960s, I could have described "slow" with more positive phrases, such as, perhaps, "subtly engaging" or "innocently unwinding" or maybe even "softly touching". I would give the film 5 1/2 or 6 stars out of 10.

--Dilip Barman, Durham, NC, Friday, August 4, 2006 (quote from Carolina Theatre, Durham NC website)