Kôhî jikô, 2003
[Café Lumière]
Hou Hsiao-hsien

Notes from Introducing Hou Hsiao-Hsien : A Deeper Shot by Phillip Lopate (Cinema Scope, Spring 2000)

• American scriptwriters are taught to make one point per scene and move on. With Hou, you feel your way into a scene, sorting as you go the characters' relationships and objectives. After a while you abandon your quest for the "key action" and surrender to the perplexing, multifarious life unfolding before you. In a sense, Hou's work is not difficult at all: you need only slow down your metabolism and submit to the pace, the images, the information onscreen. What he offers, finally, is a plenitude of life as it accumulates in the moment; the screen fills with being like water in a fish tank.

Hai shang hua, 1998
[The Flowers of Shanghai]
Hou Hsiao-hsien

• Technique:
  
• Entirely filmed in the interior with low lighting:
• Subdued lighting on characters surrounded by opulence (costumes, architecture, etc.) depicts the dichotomy between their illusory life as entertainers (or their patrons) and the artificiality and fallacy behind their act. In a stunning form of visual dichotomy, one that uses the camera as a key dramatic element, the lighting functions as a transluscent veil that helps 'illuminate' the flower girls' internality (to the audience).
• Typical for Hou, filmed in extended takes that limits human actions and interactions to the business of day-to-day living.
  

Film Watch

Nan guo zai jian nan guo [Goodbye South Goodbye]
Taiwan

Critic Arquello:

Hou encapsulates the fluidity of movement as a visual metaphor for the escapism and drug induced haze of the aimless protagonists. Through the characters' repeated pursuit of oblivion, Hou captures the transience and generational disconnection of contemporary Taiwanese from their traditional and cultural past.