Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

XoWizIama Excellent adaptation.

Frances Chung Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Ella-May O'Brien Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Enchorde Recap: This is the story about Vicky. Or not so much the story of, but the life of Vicky. We get to see a few episodes of her life, how she starts out with an abusive and jealous boyfriend and how she manages to leave him for Jack, a criminal that offers stability.Comments: This, as stated, is not a story. This is more of a picture, or a few pictures from Vicky's life. There is no real beginning, no real end, and hence no real story in between. We just get to see moments from her life. Moments from home, moments from work, and moments from nightlife.The pace is very slow, and it did not do very much to keep me interested. But something caught my eye. And that was that director Hou often chooses to place the camera in a way that I got the feeling it wasn't supposed to be there. It was not natural, it was almost like the camera was intruding. Many shots were from odd angles and shot through flowers, or through holes in the furniture. The actors were not naturally centered in the picture, and stuff happened both on and off camera. By doing so, to me, Hou really cemented that this was not a movie about a story, but more a look into Vicky's life.Interesting and as well done as that was, I still didn't enjoy it very much. Yes, beautiful in its own way, but much to slow-paced for me. To little to really keep me interested through the entire 100 minutes. But still nice to have seen once, as this is a typical award-winning movie.5/10

FilmSnobby Apparently, the major critics were not willing. Hou Hsiao-hsien is no longer the Flavor of the Month, if the reception given to *Millennium Mambo* is any guide. Hou may no longer be trendy, but his latest film remains a masterpiece -- just another notch on the Master's belt. The critics castigated Hou for wasting our collective time with a movie about a party girl; simultaneously, they praised the juvenile *Kill Bill* to the skies. The critic for the New York Times essentially declared that the artistry in the movie wasn't worth it. The critic was "bored" by the artistry.Meanwhile, those of us who are NOT bored by Hou's artistry may enjoy a feast of it in this edgy, profoundly sad movie. It's set in Taipei in 2001, though the narrating heroine "Vicky" (a gorgeous Shu Qi) speaks to us from 10 years in the "future". The film was actually MADE in 2001, though it didn't reach American shores until earlier this year: hence, an unintended poignancy arises from the fact that we, too, are looking at the film's events from the future -- a jaded, rancorous, post-September 11 future. We feel as despairing as the narrating Vicky sounds, and observe the decadent nightlife depicted here with the same sense of disbelief: were we really that hopeful, were we really that careless, when the new millennium was ushered in? In the first scene, she's walking -- almost dancing, really -- down a long concrete promenade under pale florescent lights, while the wall-to-wall techno music starts thumping ever louder. It's a moment of incandescent happiness in a movie that has few such moments.For the unpleasant details soon assert themselves: she's getting spacey on drugs in a nightclub, returning home to a live-in boyfriend who is abusive, on drugs himself, and erratically but dangerously jealous. One scene, at once nasty and blackly humorous, shows the boyfriend literally sniffing for evidence of adultery on Vicky. The girl occasionally rebels at these indignities and leaves the jerk, but, "as if hypnotized", she always returns whenever he finds her and begs her to come back to him (and he ALWAYS finds her). Hou instinctively understands the self-destructive persona, and he meticulously illustrates Vicky's addictions, whether to cigarettes, booze, "excitement", or degrading sexual relationships. The narration gives us a crucial clue, as well: we learn that this boyfriend of hers convinced her to blow off her final high school exam years back, which basically made her a drop-out and started her on a path toward a wasted life. Hou also understands WHY we're self-destructive; he understands that failure is so much easier.Occasionally, we get a break from the woozy-headed, nauseous neon underworld of Taipei and find ourselves in a snow-covered fantasyland on the Hokkaido island of Japan. Here, while frolicking in a winter wonderland with a casual Japanese boyfriend and his brother, Vicky reverts, with much relief, to childhood. There's a poignant moment when she leaves an imprint of her face in a mound of snow. The camera lingers lovingly on the image of the barely visible imprint -- it's as convenient a symbol as any for the barely visible life of a pretty party girl without talents or prospects, the type of girl one usually sees only fleetingly in movies about more melodramatic subjects like gangsters (and, yes, this movie is about gangsters, too). She's the hanger-on, the pretty ornament on the arm of the criminal. Well, leave it to Hou Hsiao-hsien, the world's greatest working director, to dare to assert that the Vickys of the world not only have a story to tell, but that their stories can be as bleak and nihilistic -- and as artfully rendered -- as any of your King Lears. It goes without saying that the Hou's camera placement is utterly and simply without peer. If anything, *Millennium Mambo* marks an advance in his technique: he takes a little more control, here, and is not quite so blandly omniscient as he can sometimes be. It's hard to write about technicalities, but Hou somehow has managed to find the perfect balance between a focused POV and his more usual reliance on oblique reference points. His cameraman, Mark Lee Ping-Bing (of *In the Mood for Love* fame), gloriously realizes Hou's vision with incredible color: smeary and throbbing neon in Taipei, ethereal and misty white in Japan. Finally, Hou has also convinced me that techno and "Deep House" music can actually approximate art . . . as long as this type of music is paired with, well, a movie by Hou Hsiao-hsien. (See his *Goodbye South, Goodbye* for more evidence.)*Millennium Mambo* is a must-see for the cineaste. 9 stars out of 10.

mdlamf The mood in which I left after viewing Millennium Mambo was a heavy sort of depression. I felt as if I had experienced, or re-experienced through memory, events causing one to give in to hopelessness; to accept being dominated by another. In retrospect, Vicky describes this period of time as being hypnotized or under a spell. Hou Hsiao-hsien is successful in casting that spell on his audience. Three aspects of the film lend to this success: the non-sequential unfolding of events, the use of long-takes from a more or less distant perspective, and the sound track. One of the first glimpses into Vicky¡¯s life with Ah Hao is at a time in their relationship when she has already given up. From here we are taken further back to various points in their relationship. There is no story per se, she is simply caught in this cycle of him finding her and her leaving, yet we do learn how she ended up in this cycle. There was a time when she resisted his advances, when she scolded his dangerous drug use, a time before she felt trapped. Knowing the end result of their relationship maintains a sense of hopelessness throughout the film. It is this constant sense of hopelessness, with no comic relief or side story to lift the weight of the mood, that causes the audience to experience the spell she is remembering. ¡°Cold, and colder, that was what I demanded of my camera¡± When I read this quote I immediately recalled the scene I mentioned above, when Vicky endures Ah Hao¡¯s advances, sexual or otherwise, annoyed, but in complete submission and as a matter of routine. The camera follows him to the floor, straining to see through the table obstructing the view but not getting any closer. While this may have been a mixture of ¡°pathos and eros¡± as Ah Hao smelled her body for the scent of other men it was indeed a disturbing violation that the camera forced the audience to participate in by calmly looking on. Other long-takes, showing two or more simultaneous independent actions, helped to invoke her sense of loneliness and the monotony of her life as the minutes dragged. Thirdly, the soundtrack, with its hypnotic beat and mix of high-pitched, eerie sounds, matched the repetition of events played out on the screen. He was the DJ, controlling the sounds added over the same, never-ending rhythm. This is what she lived with, day in and day out. Even as she is walking alone over the bridge, the same music is playing in her head.

robbie-30 A grey-blue tunnel, neon lights, a surrealistic music and a girl "slowly" running through... That's the great, fashionable, beginning of Millennium Mambo. This start gives the film the right imprinting: everything you will see and hear from now on, will be equally beautiful and magic. But...But there are no characters and it is very hard to be interested on the stories of Vicky and her silent, unemployed, boyfriend. everything is so, so boring. Why?Now-a-days Chinese film-makers can be the best. The best in cinematography, in composing good scores, in acting, in art direction, but sometimes they miss the story. Like in Millennium Mambo.