Ai qing wan sui

Yes, I timed it. It's exactly six minutes and 25 seconds of a closeup (stationary camera) of a woman crying. She pauses once to light a new cigarette, and then she resumes crying.

This example is designed to illustrate how tedious the movie can be. Don't get me wrong; slow is good sometimes. Ketchup, mango sorbet, a sunrise... yes, these things are best enjoyed slowly. But now imagine a spoonful of mango sorbet that just refuses to leave your spoon. You shake it, you bite at it, you pry it with your tongue, but it just won't budge.

That's when slow crosses into annoying.

Before you dismiss me as some MTV-generation ADHD kid, let me mention that two of my favourite movies are "Werckmeister Harmoniak" (camera shots that last up to 13 minutes) and Kieslowsky's "Trois Couleurs" (where we watch an old woman struggling with a rubbish bin for 2 minutes, repeated 3 times). "2001: A Space Odyssey" is another winner. And I wish "Russian Ark" could've been an hour longer. Those are all painfully slow films. But this film makes them look like the Indy 500.

Ming-liang Tsai's later work, "The Hole" is much more substantial. It's just as slow but with one important difference: "The Hole" keeps us interested with it's cryptic plot and imaginative setting. Here we have no such incentive to stay awake. The plot is banal, colours are drab, acting is concrete (deliberately, I'm sure), and the camera is as lethargic as a kid on dope, only without the potato chips.

In my opinion, the movie reaches its only high point halfway through when we are shown a very clever and poignant analogy which I won't ruin for you. It was absolutely brilliant, and it's the only reason why I'm rating this movie a 6 instead of a 3.

I think the director just pushed it one step too far with the slow pace. At first it works, but after a while--just like an old joke--it fails to carry any more punch, and it seems gratuitous and gimmicky.

My suggestion is for you to watch "The Hole" first. Even though it's done in the same slow style, it's much more challenging and intriguing (see my review of "The Hole"). If you really like that movie (and I mean REALLY like it...rating it an 8 or better) then try "Vive l'Amour". Otherwise, you might want to think twice. This movie just sucks the life out of you. And the crying scene freaked out my dog.

Great movie if you want to know more about life in Taiwan anno 1994

I don't even know where to begin on Vive L'Amour. It is the second Tsai Ming-liang film I've seen, after The Hole. I doubted that it could be as good as The Hole, but it turned out to be an even better film. In fact, I'd say it's pretty close to perfect. The only thing I don't like about it is its American title - "Vive L'Amour" makes it sound like a romantic comedy starring Gerard Depardieu. This film is about love, but not in any conventional way.

I'd love to relate the plot of the film, but I think that'd ruin it quite a bit. Part of the fun of it is figuring out exactly what's going on. Those who like puzzle films will find the initial puzzle of Vive L'Amour very intriguing. Those who don't like slow-moving films should avoid it, though. A good benchmark: if you like Antonioni's films, especially L'Avventura, which is directly referenced in this film, you'll probably like it. Here's an intriguing fact about Vie L'Amour: there is not one piece of audible dialogue spoken until 21 minutes have gone by. One of the main characters does not speak until 49 minutes have passed. If you were to write out all the dialogue of the film, you could probably fit it on a single page. Tsai is simply audacious in his paucity of dialogue. And it could have easily seemed like little more than a stunt, but the characters still come off as fully developed and interesting people. The drama works wonders, and there is a lot of comedy, too. The film is also very erotic.

I really don't want to say another word about this film. I hope that any reader will have enjoyed or agreed with the numerous other reviews I have written to take my recommendation at face value. I have seen hundreds of great films, and Vive L'Amour is one of the best I have seen. Also, make sure to check out The Hole, which is also on Fox Lorber DVD. Fox Lorber has gotten a lot of undeserved criticism in the past. Their DVDs aren't always the best (they're no Criterion), but they're usually of great visual quality. They may have few extras, but extras are not always necessary. I would even suggest that Criterion sometimes stuffs their DVDs with unnecessary and low-quality material.

I suppose it's nice and trendy to see wonderful things in the absolute emptiness of a film like this. With the sometimes pointless excesses of many Hollywood films, we can relax and enjoy a scene devoid of explosions, foul language, and corny one-liners. Minimalism has its place, and can be very effective when employed properly. However, this film is not one of those cases.

Take the long scenes with no dialogue and dreary, sparse scenery. I'm sure that they must hold some great meaning and insight, because the implied message in shrouded in bafflement. The acting is poor... bland and pedestrian... and features one of the worst crying scenes in history (at the end of the film, if you can sit through it to the end). The scenery is drab, and the ridiculously long ending sequence of the girl walking through the barren park is as pleasurable as having a tooth pulled. I would call this anticlimatic, but as the film didn't build to any sort of climax whatsoever... not even in the "erotic" scenes... it would be untrue. I'm sure that there was a script employed during the filming, but with the amount of dialogue, I think it might have been written on a cocktail napkin. Basically, this film offers nothing to interest or amaze... no great story, no stunning insights, no visual drama, no excitement. Apart from two or three amusing moments, this film is a waste of two hours. A tragically boring and dreary film.

One of the best of Tsai Ming-liang's glacial case studies of contemporary isolation and alienation in Taipei/the world, VIVE L'AMOUR is gripping in spite of it's extreme slowness (his work shares this quality with Tarkovsky or Antonioni). Tsai's work is superficially very chilly and ultimately heartbreaking - though Tsai also (as always) manages to also sneak in a little deadpan humor, which in this case includes the rather ironic translated title.

Three young, outwardly successful Taiwanese happen to cross paths - unknowingly at first - in the empty Taipei condominium one (a real estate agent) is attempting to sell. Through a bare minimum in dialogue - VIVE L'AMOUR is essentially a silent film until about 20 minutes in - Tsai charts their isolation and fumbling attempts at various kinds of human connection and finding some personal sort of peace. Tsai's scenario and characters are globalized, stripped of most marks of identity, and very much adrift, and their growth (or lack of it) is communicated through sparse forms of acting, direction and cinematography that reinvents seemingly antiquated forms of film-making (again, silent film) into a new-millennial era. In this, Tsai crafts a sort of haunted, elegaic drama that slides around the limitations of language, inhabiting a dreamlike, if also very dark, psychological territory.

Typically Tsai uses no musical score, and the dialog is very sparse, with the film favoring the natural sound of whatever environment the characters find themselves in, so the many memorable scenes do tend to sneak up on you. The finale is unforgettable.