Despite the grand expectations placed on Taiwan's star director Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) at the Cannes Film Festival, it appears his counterpart Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) is grabbing all the headlines.
To many people's surprise, Hou's Millennium Mambo (千禧曼波) did not receive a rapturous welcome from audiences and has been widely panned in the international media. On the other hand, three days after the premiering of Tsai Ming-liang's film What Time is it There? (你那邊幾點?), the film is getting more and more favorable scores from film magazines here at the festival and gaining momentum as a popular favorite for an award.
The sparse turnout at the press conference for Millennium Mambo on Saturday and the scant applause at the movie's screening was somewhat of an embarrassment for Hou, given the high expectations and his outstanding entries at previous Cannes festivals.
Winning an award, however, has never seemed much of a concern for Hou and at the late-night party held by the film's international distributor Fortissimo Film Sales at Manray Beach on the Croisette, Hou and his actors, Jack Kao (高捷), Shu Qi (舒淇) and Tuan Chun-hao (段鈞毫) and the crew seemed to be having the best time of anyone in Cannes, dancing until the early morning. Hou even showed off some unusual dance steps to a Michael Jackson song. Fortissimo is also the international distributor for Tsai's What Time is it There?.
In an earlier interview session yesterday, Hou made clear that his main objective is to break new ground in his cinematic creativity. "I am looking for a new way of formal expression in my films," he said. What he did in this instance was to set the film 10 years in the future to provide an intriguing perspective on Taipei.
"In the end, what you see are traces of the city's memory. What Vicky [the main character in the film] has been feeling are merely the traces of time in the city," Hou said.
"Maybe I'm just too far ahead of filmmaking trends," Hou said jokingly.
Having come to Cannes five times before, Hou said the festival is like a formal pow-wow of filmmakers and industry people. Hou originally did not want Millennium Mambo to join the festival, because of the limited time to complete the film, "but an old car like me should still run," Hou said.
Tsai, on the other hand, has rapidly emerged as one of the brightest talents at the festival. His film, without the star quality of Shu Qi in Millennium Mambo, nor the publicity, has nevertheless been gathering praise as the end of the festival approaches. What Time is it There? is ranked second by Moving Pictures magazine and third by Le Film Francais magazine among the 23 competing films. The sudden attention has done much to boost the morale of Tsai and his crew. "I want to have peace of mind going into the awards ceremony," which was set to take place late yesterday, Tsai said at the Millennium Mambo party.
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