David O'ConnellMillennium Mambo
November 25th 2009 03:42
As Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien most recently displayed in 2007 with Flight of the Red Balloon, a strong narrative framework is of little interest to him. Instead he prefers to saturate his work with random imagery, hoping elliptical snatches will coalesce into some profound statement about the lives of his characters.
In his 2001 film, Millennium Mambo, the process is an abject failure, dooming this tale of an aimless young woman in Taipei and her unfulfilling love life, to irredeemable stagnation. Vicky (Qi Shu) is trapped in a hedonistic cycle, living with a drug-addled boyfriend, Hao-hao (Tuan Chun-hao), whose idea of foreplay is to comprehensively sniff her to distraction! He's a petty, inarticulate thief who deliberately sabotaged her prospects of a better life by allowing her to oversleep and miss a vital exam.
Vicky’s waking moments are mostly spent in wordless stand-offs with Hao-hao or roaming clubs engaged in senseless snatches of conversation with a series of similarly directionless young women. Little actually happens and a sporadic narration - from a future version of Vicky talking of her former self with lukewarm detachment - often telegraphs what’s to come as if there might be some poetry to be spotted in her inexplicable failure to break free from this spiral into despair.
Hou is known for being an unconventional stylist; though Millennium Mambo mostly eschews the experimental approach to narrative in Flight of the Red Balloon, it still falls way short of the mark. The environment certainly adds colour and visual markers that draw the eye; Hou skillfully exploits the neon and meticulously-placed bright lights which often burn like out-of-focus flares in the background.
But nothing in the film qualifies as compelling drama; these are unsympathetic lost souls endeavoring little to assist their own cause. Vicky leaves Hao-hao a number of times but he tracks her down and she submits to his pleas again; each time accompanied by the absurd, childish insistance of her future self that she had determined to only leave him for good once her piggybank was completely emptied.
She finds a possible saviour in hostess bar owner Jack (Jack Kao) but after a few displays of seemingly genuine concern, one of his minions gets into strife, forcing him to flee to Japan. The soundtrack acts as an extension of the club scenes, weaving dreamy, electronic music throughout to provide a pulse that never manifests itself in what passes for human interaction in the film.
Millennium Mambo is a disheartening failure, Hou wasting his visionary gifts on a half-formed screenplay by regular collaborator Chu T'ien-wen; one populated, it must be said, with a skeletal wasteland of figures barely sustained with enough dialogue to even call them characters. This is a train-wreck; a very photogenic one, no doubt, but a train-wreck nonetheless.
In his 2001 film, Millennium Mambo, the process is an abject failure, dooming this tale of an aimless young woman in Taipei and her unfulfilling love life, to irredeemable stagnation. Vicky (Qi Shu) is trapped in a hedonistic cycle, living with a drug-addled boyfriend, Hao-hao (Tuan Chun-hao), whose idea of foreplay is to comprehensively sniff her to distraction! He's a petty, inarticulate thief who deliberately sabotaged her prospects of a better life by allowing her to oversleep and miss a vital exam.
Vicky’s waking moments are mostly spent in wordless stand-offs with Hao-hao or roaming clubs engaged in senseless snatches of conversation with a series of similarly directionless young women. Little actually happens and a sporadic narration - from a future version of Vicky talking of her former self with lukewarm detachment - often telegraphs what’s to come as if there might be some poetry to be spotted in her inexplicable failure to break free from this spiral into despair.
Hou is known for being an unconventional stylist; though Millennium Mambo mostly eschews the experimental approach to narrative in Flight of the Red Balloon, it still falls way short of the mark. The environment certainly adds colour and visual markers that draw the eye; Hou skillfully exploits the neon and meticulously-placed bright lights which often burn like out-of-focus flares in the background.
But nothing in the film qualifies as compelling drama; these are unsympathetic lost souls endeavoring little to assist their own cause. Vicky leaves Hao-hao a number of times but he tracks her down and she submits to his pleas again; each time accompanied by the absurd, childish insistance of her future self that she had determined to only leave him for good once her piggybank was completely emptied.
She finds a possible saviour in hostess bar owner Jack (Jack Kao) but after a few displays of seemingly genuine concern, one of his minions gets into strife, forcing him to flee to Japan. The soundtrack acts as an extension of the club scenes, weaving dreamy, electronic music throughout to provide a pulse that never manifests itself in what passes for human interaction in the film.
Millennium Mambo is a disheartening failure, Hou wasting his visionary gifts on a half-formed screenplay by regular collaborator Chu T'ien-wen; one populated, it must be said, with a skeletal wasteland of figures barely sustained with enough dialogue to even call them characters. This is a train-wreck; a very photogenic one, no doubt, but a train-wreck nonetheless.
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