MILLENNIUM MAMBO
by Josh Timmermann

Perhaps more than any other contemporary filmmaker, Hou Hsiao-hsien seems thoroughly fascinated by the past; the way that it has somehow twisted itself into what we know as the present; and its ambiguous implications for the future. This fascination is evident from the beginning of Hou's new film, Millennium Mambo.

It opens with a dreamy, slow-motion prologue. A woman, young and strikingly beautiful, walks down an empty walkway. After a few seconds, her voice fills the soundtrack. "She broke up with Hao-hao, but he always tracked her down…called her…begged her to come back…again and again. As if under a spell or hypnotized, she couldn't escape. She always came back. She told herself…that she had 500,000 in the bank. When she used it up, she would leave him for good. This happened ten years ago…in the year 2001. The world was greeting the 21st Century. And celebrating the new millennium."

The woman, Vicky (Shu Qi), sounds, at once, both sad and knowing. We infer from the way she speaks that this will be a bittersweet look back. Yet she has obviously grown as a person. She talks about her past with a certain amount of detachment, even objectivity. Often we see an occurrence play out onscreen just shortly after Vicky describes it, and these events are almost always more passionate and involved than she remembers them to be, suggesting, perhaps, that she is now in a more serene, peaceful frame of mind. Vicky's narration calls to mind Sissy Spacek's self-promise to never again "tag around with the hell-bent type," in Terrence Malick's Badlands, as well as Michele Reis' lovely closing thoughts in Wong Kar-wai's Fallen Angels. Unlike Wong's films, though, Millennium Mambo doesn't view the millennium's turn with a claustrophobic sense of anxiety. Hou's film actually seems vaguely hopeful in regards to the new era; his heroine even sees it as a fresh start for herself.

As Vicky, Shi Qu gives a performance that is, in many ways, reminiscent of those by Anna Karina, Liv Ullmann, and Monica Vitti for Godard, Bergman, and Antonioni, respectively. She trusts her director completely, and her surrendering to his vision adds layers to the beauty and depth of her performance here. One of the film's most unforgettable images features Vicky lying in bed, almost motionless We see the reflection of an untuned television on a window behind her as trains pass by in the background. Without using any words, Hou has instantly communicated the restless halt of Vicky's life; she stops, the world doesn't.

There are many such images in Millennium Mambo: a man impressing his circle of friends and acquaintances with magic tricks in a fluorescently lit club; a touching scene where two people play together in snowdrifts; and a scene near the end where we see movie posters covered in sheets of snow. Mark Li Ping-bin's photography is even more hypnotically mobile than usual. Wandering continuously around a room of people, his camera creates a rhythm of introduction and communication that is essential to Hou's narrative style.

At other times his work here seems down-right voyeuristic. While Vicky and her boyfriend (Tuan Chun-hao) fight with one another during one scene, the camera's movement creates that distinctive brand of unease and discomfort that immediately call to mind Cassavetes' domestic dramas. While the film's story is told in flashback, it is certainly a look forward, into the future, for its director. Millennium Mambo is both a requiem for the past and, to paraphrase Vicky's narration, "a celebration of the new millennium." Looking backward and forward, Hou offers a contemplation of the quicksilver nature of memory. Few films in recent years are as eloquent, gorgeous, poetic, and cinematic.

©2002 Josh Timmermann
CineScene