Vive l’amour

Tsai Ming-liang’s striking and beautiful second feature, a haunting look at alienation among three young individuals in Taipei–a real estate agent, a street vendor, and a gay and painfully withdrawn burial-plot salesman–won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival and remains one of the key modernist works of the Taiwanese New Wave. Working principally without dialogue–with a feeling for both modern architecture and contemporary urban despair that often recalls Michaelangelo Antonioni–it gathers force slowly but builds to a powerful and devastating finale. Film Center, Art Institute, Columbus Drive at Jackson, Saturday, August 17, 3:30, 443-3737.

–Jonathan Rosenbaum

Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Photo from Vive l’amour.