Three Times
d. Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005
My only hope for watching Hou Hsiao-hsien's latest wonderful film Three Times again is that it is magically released in Houston. Either that or waiting for a DVD, but it's not remotely the same thing. At least the copy I saw of it was quite nice (import DVD quality), but this is truly a film that needs to be seen on the big screen.
Three Times is essentially three different films that revolve around the same two actors (Shu Qi and Chang Chen) in three different time periods: 1966, 1911, and 2005, in that order. The first part, subtitled "A Time for Love," tells the story of a soldier who falls in love with a girl who works at a pool hall. When he returns not to find her there, he searches all over Taiwan, and the section concludes with a lovely shot of them under an umbrella while it's raining, holding hands.
The second part ("A Time for Freedom"), the saddest of the three, takes place in 1911 and this time Shu is a concubine and Chang is a journalist. She wants to be freed (married) and he is too busy writing about his revolutionary ideals to really notice her. While the first section ends in hope, this part, which plays out like a silent film (title cards and all), ends with a shot of Shu crying, and Hou's compositions highlight her trapped environment.
"A Time for Youth," the concluding segment, takes place in modern day Taiwan and follows a bisexual rock star and her male photographer lover. The sequences in this final segment are particularly hypnotic and it may be my favorite of the three. It is in some ways also the darkest, with Shu's clingy female lover committing suicide and implying that another of Shu's lover has done so before. This last part ends the same way it begins, with the detached couple, Shu and Chang, riding in his motorcycle down a busy street. There is some symmetry between the three parts; the first ends in happiness, the second in sadness, and the final segment in utter indifference and ennui.
Three Times has a lot to say about the nature of relationships and the different barriers between people. Each of the three "times" could stand as its own great, if short, film, but the overall experience of watching the three segments is really something exceptional.
