Hou switches beat

It's difficult to catch the vicissitudes of youth in images. But this was the task of director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) over the past two years as he made the first installment of his Millennium Mambo (千禧曼波) series which he expects to complete over the next 10 years.

The first installment of Millennium Mambo was Hou's much-anticipated entry at this year's Cannes Film Festival, running in competition for the Golden Palm.

And for many who attended the press screening of the film, Hou's images may take a little getting used to. Compared to his previous works, this movie has less long-takes, more close-ups and the camera moves more often. The colors are abrasive neons, textured with the smoke and flashes of techno pubs. And the picture is filled with frenetic electronic music.

This is a drastic shift from Hou's slow-paced, nostalgic takes on Taiwan in his previous films. Instead, Hou's new focus is on the messy reality of young people's lives, strained relationships and drug culture.

"My ultimate concern is always about people and their lives. A few years ago I became associated with a group of young people and we hung out a lot. I began to want to record their lives. I decided not to do films of the past anymore. Making a film about reality is a new challenge for me," said Hou, reflecting on the inspiration for Millennium Mambo.

What intrigued Hou was the "light," floating nature of the lives of today's youth. "By saying light I mean their lives and personalities have only a very slim attachment to the larger social and historical environment."

Preliminary research for the film entailed Hou and his actors -- Shu Qi (舒淇), Tuan Chun-hao (段鈞豪), Jack Kao (高捷) and crew -- frequenting Taipei's hottest night spots, such as Texhound, Spin and various hostess bars along Linsen North Road over a period of two months.

Millennium Mambo begins with a long, moving shot of leading actress Shu Qi walking through a long, tunnel-like overpass, with her voice-over recounting the story of her life over the past 10 years -- the story of Vicky. Vicky is a Keelung girl who has come to Taipei in search of excitement but finds herself stuck in a rut making her living as a bar hostess and with a neurotic boyfriend named Hao-hao (毫毫). Adding emotional complexity and ambiguity to the film is Jack, a bar owner much older than Vicky and her friends, who cares deeply for Vicky and watches over her when she is bullied by Hao-hao.

Perhaps because Hou's reputation in Europe was primarily built on his combination of poetics and realism in dealing with sweeping social and historical issues, Millennium Mambo seems to have caught the Cannes audience off guard. To many people's surprise, there was little applause at the end of yesterday's press screening.

"The film is more about an atmosphere, the fleeting feelings that you may lose at any moment. Looking at these young people's lives is like looking at leaves falling rapidly from a tree. You have to focus on one leaf, really watch it fall, then it might fall more slowly because of your gaze," Hou said.

Millennium Mambo, then, is a slice-of-life story focused on the reality of one girl's troubled existence.

Given Hou's distance in age from his characters and his confessed inability to tap into the tempo of life of today's young people, the director was forced to make adjustments to the film. "I set the film 10 years from now, in 2010 to create a sense of distance from which to look at Vicky. It's like a memory, you visualize what you remember the most," he said.