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.