Vive l’amour

This is an exercise in concentration and endurance, heir to Antonioni’s approach and perhaps surpassing him in terms of pure, prolonged examination of human behaviors. It’s like a staring contest, and I emerged with mixed results: sometimes I blinked first; sometimes I stared Tsai down. So if I don’t give this film full marks, if I didn’t completely love it, it may only be because I haven’t fully developed my faculties for viewing such a film yet; Antonioni didn’t come fluently at first, either. Perhaps by the end of the month I’ll be there. In any case, while I found the “slowness” a challenge at times, I’m somewhat perplexed by comments I’ve read about Tsai’s very sparse dialogue being “audacious” and “daring.” He is such a student of human nature: and how little of our time do we really spend in conversation? Tsai’s the one who gets it right, in the most simple and pure ways. Certainly, just as much character development takes place, as much meaning can be expressed, with few or no words at all. Ultimately, there were times when I was riveted by this, and other times when I confess I wandered away from him entirely. I’ll give the TNWers a longer look before I can decide whether that’s my “fault” or the director’s.