Chang Chen and Shu Qi fall in love in three different decades in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s THREE TIMES
THREE TIMES (Hou Hsiao-hsien, 2005)
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Sunday, September 14, free with museum admission, 7:00
Series runs September 12 – October 17
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
Hou Hsiao-hsien’s gorgeous Three Times is an evocative, poetic trilogy of tales about life and love in Taiwan, all starring the mesmerizing Shu Qi (Hou’s Millennium Mambo) and the stalwart Chang Chen (Wong Kar-wai’s 2046 and Happy Together). In A Time for Love, set in 1966 and featuring a repeated soft-rock soundtrack, Chen, about to leave for military service, meets May, a pool-hall girl, and promises to write to her even though they have only just met and barely said a word to each other. When he gets a furlough, he goes to the pool hall only to find that she’s on the move, so with Zen-like cool he tries to track her down. A Time for Freedom, a silent film with interstitial dialogue and period music, takes place in an elegant brothel in 1911, where Mr. Chang regularly visits a beautiful courtesan. But while she dreams of him buying out her contract and marrying her, he seems intent on helping out another couple instead. Hou concludes the trilogy with A Time for Youth, set in fast-paced modern-day Taipei, as Jing, an epileptic singer, and Zhen, a motorcycle-riding photographer, embark on a passionate, nearly wordless affair that has serious consequences for their significant others. Three Times is a rare treat for cineastes, a poetic, intelligent, though overly long study of relationships between men and women in a changing Taiwan over the last hundred years, focusing on character, time and place, and the art of filmmaking itself. Three Times is screening September 14 at 7:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image series “Also like Life: The Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien” and will be introduced by Amy Taubin.