Millennium Mambo
A dance with time

by Face
September 22, 2004

Reflecting at a nigh club

Hou Hsiao-hsien's Millennium Mambo is beautiful and benign—an elegantly indirect glimpse of a woman's life set adrift with nowhere to go and no one to choose. The woman (an unfledged version of Hou's deferential yet resonant icons from Flowers of Shangai) is Vicky (Shu Qi), a disenfranchised, abbating spirit, vacillating with little sense of what to do—or not do. She is an avatar of ennui, living a life of languid regression not because she wants to, but because, as she explains, "I don't know what I should do."

Vicky is played by Taiwanese superstar and former model Shu Qi in a performance that comes as an unexpected amazement. Qi is a star mostly recognized for her roles in action films that tend to exploit her beauty and beauty alone. Here she plays a reserved, complex, unsettled character, a young woman who has been living an uninspired life, who reconciles herself to stagnation, whose life, no matter how destructive, is the only thing she thinks she knows.

Vicky works at a club by profession, and parties at a club draped in vibrant lights (appropriately named Spin) by routine. When having fun, people seem to like her. But when she's not partying to an endless techno-remix, she's sitting around the apartment with her boyfriend, Hao-Hao, wasting time. She tells herself once the money in her account is all used up, she'll leave her abusive boyfriend once and for all. But each time she tries to leave, her solemn voiceover explains (set at a vantage point 10 years in the future), she returns, as if hypnotized under a spell.

Hou shows us the off-tempo downbeat of their relationship with demonstrations of difficulty, in scenes that observe instead of judge. Consider a scene in their apartment. Vicky is in the shower, and Hao-hao is visibly distressed. He starts to empty her purse, digging through her personal possessions without consent, throwing everything he doesn't care about on the ground. Aggravated, he bangs on the door violently, accusing her of cheating on him. As she comes out, he pulls out a phone card; obviously assuming the longer calls were to her ostensible lover. Even after she explains they were calls to her mother, he refuses to believe her. The scene ends with Vicky storming out of the apartment in disarray.

Millennium Mambo is written by Chu Tien-wen and directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, the man behind more than a dozen films, including The Puppetmaster and Flowers of Shanghai. Once again he is fascinated by observations of the inexperienced, the impulsive and the unplanned-the indefinite perception of the way things might have been. One might think Vicky and Hao-hao are demoralized disappointments, and, to some extent, they are, but that's not entirely what's being said. For Hou, Vicky is representative of an orphaned generation lost within the cycle and rhythm of their existential malaise, where escapism is requisite and dehumanization is commonplace. Hou is curious and sympathetic of his characters' dilemmas, and he makes that obvious with his preserved style and distant yet rich examination. Long time cinematographer Pin Bing Lee (In the Mood for Love) accentuates Hou's emotive exposition with a breathtaking composition of disheartened promenades and ethereal silences. It's wonderful how the film reveals the oblique current of Vicky's life in such small details as a shot with her strolling down a moonlit walkway.

Millennium Mambo is a movie about moments in a woman's life, some important, some generic. Hou does not seek to victimize his heroine or condemn her companions, nor does he wish to substantiate their principles. Instead, his deliberate focus is the dissemblance of their circumstances. Why does Hao-Hao continue to act in the way he does? Why is Vicky willingly subjecting herself to the oppression of others? These are questions to which there is no answer, only conjecture. Hou observes his characters. He watches them closely and curiously. He wonders why, and compels you to do so as well.

Director:
Hou Hsiao-hsien
Writer:
Chu Tien-Wen
Starring:
Shu Qi
Jack Kao
Released:
5/9/2001
Production:
3H Productions
Also known as:
Qian xi man po
Links:
IMDB Profile
Theatrical Trailer