Three Times
Shu Qi and Chang Chen are the actors playing three different sets of lovers, in 1911, 1966 and 2005, in this unusually beautiful film from director Hou Hsiao-hsien. All three stories take place in Taiwan and focus on love in different manifestations – love in its glorious first flush, love thwarted, and love carnal – to show how milieu and mores affect what is usually seen as an immutable, timeless emotion. In 1911 a republican activist gets caught up in the world of a concubine. In 1966 a military conscript falls for a hostess at a pool hall. In 2005 a photographer loses his heart to a singer. Hou places the 1911 story in … Read more