Shu Qi

          Zhang Zhen

 

 

Hou Hsiao Hsien's latest title Three Times has been named Best Taiwanese Film of the Year in the Golden Horse Film Awards 2005, and Shu Qi took home the Best Actress award for this film. She and Chang Chen each play three different roles in three love stories that are reincarnations of each other. The three episodes, "A Time of Love", "A Time for Freedom", and "A Time for Youth", each document a period in Taiwanese history. Bygones in our memories are always the best of times - this may be the underlying theme of the three vignettes in Three Times. These fragmentary memories bear no name, nor belong to any categories, but they are the best of times that lodge in our mind.

In "A Time of Love", set in 1966, a young man who is about to enter the military service falls in love with a girl working in a parlor. She disappears when he returns from holiday, so he begins the search... The parlor and the popular song Smoke Gets in Your Eyes all reminds us of the influence of American culture in Taiwan in the late 50s.

"A Time for Freedom" sidetracks the conflicts and tensions during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. A female courtesan meets a man who is promoting freedom of Taiwan from the Japanese occupation, and she starts to wonder about her own freedom, too. The segment's silent film format is another remembrance of the old cinematic form.

The third episode "A Time for Youth" is a tale happening in Taipei in 2005, in which a bisexual young woman who suffers from epilepsy falls in love with a photographer in a printing shop. In a disordered contemporary city, what remains in a triangular love relation is only confusion...