Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Whitech It is not only a funny movie, but it allows a great amount of joy for anyone who watches it.

Melanie Bouvet The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

PiranianRose This movie achieved substantial impact on me, in a good way. Firstly, it's the first Hou Hsiou Hsien film that I have been able to sit through in its entirety. As much as I claim to admire film as art, I will not ever consider giving FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI another attempt. Secondly, I now see Hou Hsiou Hsien as one of the most respectable craftsman in cinema, even more admirable than Zhang Yimou from China or my personal favorite, Wong Kar Wai from HK, and I'll give my reasons. Zhang and Wong take risks with their creations, but they are relatively easy to grasp, and even have some entertainment values. For example, Zhang's TO LIVE is an emotionally heavy drama that spans several generations before, during, and after Cultural Revolution. Even if one doesn't have taste for art films, one could enjoy its sheer melodrama. In the case of Wong, his Chungking Express has a huge cult following. It has a sweet touch of spontaneity that makes it watchable to anyone, although the disconnected storytelling could throw some people off.So Zhang can do intense drama, and Wong can direct spontaneous acting. Hou Hsiou Hsien (or his colleagues Tsai Ming Liang and Edward Yang), however, is of a different breed. His films (that I've seen anyway) are casual but deliberately never ever strive to be interesting. For example, there's no moody music, showy cinematography, or thought-provoking dialogue to spice things up while you watch a 2-minute long take of people walking. Everything is just as indifferent as it is and nothing more; then it's up to us to give it a meaning -- that is the essence of MINIMALISM which define Hou's body of work. Minimalist cinema is by far the most difficult to grasp and sit through (since "nothing happens," some will understandably accuse), and many viewers detest it with a passion. Whether this style is actually effective I do not know, "all I know is this: once I was blind and now I can see." Good Men Good Women is an eye opener for me.In recent years, several well-noted Chinese art house filmmakers have upgraded to generously budgeted blockbusters: Ang Lee with Crouching Tiger, Zhang Yimou with Hero and Flying Dagger, He Ping with Warriors of Heaven & Earth, Fruit Chan with Three Extremes: Dumpling, not to forget Cheng Kaige's special effects fantasy extravaganza The Promise on the way, followed by Wong Kar Wai reportedly to film an American feature The Lady from Shanghai with Nicole Kidman, and words of Hou's Taiwanese colleague Edward Yang to direct an animation produced by Jackie Chan. In such a relaxing trend, will Hou Hsiou Hsien have any surprises for us, or will he continue to explore Taiwan in minimalist glory?

Howard Schumann Encouraged by American foreign policy, the Kuomintang government in Taiwan in the 1950s began a policy of repression of real or suspected communists who were rounded up by the military police, detained, and often shot. This event, known as the White Terror, was suppressed in Taiwan, along with the 2-28-47 massacres, without any public discussion for forty years. Only the trees were witnesses and the story could not be told until martial law was lifted in 1987, yet even now remains clouded with hints of undisclosed crimes. Hou Hsiao-hsien's 1995 film Good Men, Good Women dramatizes the Taiwanese people's fear and reluctance to deal with their past, showing the effects of Taiwan's forgotten history on the destiny of an actress in present-day Taiwan. Dedicated to all the political victims of the 1950s, the film uses the device of a "film within a film" to tell the story of real-life activists Chiang Bi-Yu (also played by Inoh) and her husband Hao-Tung (Giong Lim) who fought in China against the Japanese during World War II but were arrested as Communists when they came home. Good Men, Good Women takes place in three different time sequences: the contemporary world of actress Liang Ching (Annie Shizuka Inoh), her recollection of her recent past as a drug-addicted barmaid, and the world of a yet to be made film about resistance fighters in the 1940s. Hou suggests a contrast between the sterile, corrupt lives of the present generation and the young people of the past who acted with a social conscience. While it is a complex and elliptical film, it is one of Hou's greatest, filled with tenderness and sensuality and an aching melancholy for a world whose promise has remained unfulfilled. The film opens with a parade of young people dressed as peasants who march toward the camera singing a joyous song: "When yesterday's sadness is about to die. When tomorrow's good cheer is marching towards us. Then people say, don't cry. So why don't we sing." The camera then cuts to present day Taipei where an unidentified caller telephones Liang Chang but refuses to speak. The caller has stolen her diaries, and faxes her the pages daily prompting her to recall her tragic relationship with Ah Wei (Jack Kao), a gangster who died in a shootout. The film intersperses scenes of intimacy between the two lovers with the world of the 1940s where Chiang Bi-Yu and Hao-Tung, have left Taiwan for the Chinese mainland to support the anti-Japanese resistance. The "film within a film" shows how Chiang and Hao are forced to put their children in foster care and Liang identifies with Chiang, drawing parallels from her own experience of having to give up the things she loved the most.Hou shows that events buried in a nation's past can have far reaching consequences and that history may be indistinguishable from personal memory. Yet the film is not one of ideas but of images and Hou has provided some memorable ones; for example, when Liang sits before a mirror putting on her makeup as Ah Wei sits closely beside her talking about the possibility of her being pregnant. It is a mundane event, yet Hou imparts it with a mysterious and timeless quality. In many ways, Good Men, Good Women is typical of Hou's films with its static camera, long takes, and rhythms of everyday life, yet it is also his most political, a searing indictment of the squandering of a nation's heritage, allowing us to see that a country, like its people, cannot redeem its future until it tells the truth about its past.

mlstein A film about time and isolation and loss on a personal level, and on a national level, too; the Taiwanese patriots in the film-within-a-film cannot even speak Chinese--Taiwan having been a Japanese colony since 1895--so they are strangers to the motherland and strangers when they return home. The personal story glides seamlessly into the political. Endlessly moving, and only slow if you cannot feel Hou's deep compassion and depth of understanding. Why is this film maker not celebrated everywhere?

xuck It seems that director Hou has failed dealing with big ideas. This movie is too quiet and too emotionless. His early movies are much better with small everyday facts.