In an early episode in The Wayward Cloud, Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi) spends an aimless afternoon watching television news reports on the ongoing drought and the coincidentally timed falling market price of watermelons, leading the anchorman to jokingly remark that drinking watermelon juice has become more economical than drinking water. The theme of essential substitution proves […]
What Time Is It There? opens to a long, unbroken static shot of a middle-aged man (Tien Miao) preparing the kitchen table for a meal, then calling for his son, Hsiao Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) to no avail, then biding time waiting for his family to sit down for dinner by smoking a cigarette, before walking […]
The final days of the year 1999 prove to be a bleak and chaotic time in Taipei. A widespread virus, “Taiwan Fever”, has crippled the city, reducing its victims into exhibiting unusual, cockroach-like behavior. Quarantined areas have been established, and the uninfected residents are repeatedly encouraged through news broadcasts to evacuate into government arranged temporary […]
An unemployed young man named Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) passes idle time at a local Taipei mall when he encounters an old friend (Chen Shiang-chyi) on the opposite escalator. With time on his hands, he agrees to accompany her back to the location shoot where she is working as a production assistant for a film. At […]
In the crowded metropolitan city of Taipei, the empty lives of three strangers cross paths in a vacant apartment. The film opens to a shot of a key accidentally left on the front door. Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a fragile, young salesman, seizes the key, inspects the apartment, and decides to move in, proceeding to bathe, […]
On a raining evening at a nondescript telephone booth in Taipei, two petty criminals, Ah-tze (Chen Chao-jung) and his friend Ah-ping (Jen Chang-bin) drill through the lock of the public telephone and steal the contents of the collection box. In another part of the city, an unmotivated and distracted student named Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) encounters […]