At 75 years of age and having already directed nearly 20 films, at this point in his career, Chinese-born Taiwanese film director and screenwriter Hou Hsiao-hsien delivers a film every ten years or so or whenever he’s damn ready. The last film he made, “The Assassin” (2015; our review), possibly the artiest, most meditative wuxia film ever made and something of a masterpiece (I don’t really make top 10 lists anymore, but the last time I did one, “The Assassin” was on it). Six of his films have competed at Cannes, and in 1990, Hou was voted “Director of the Decade” for the 1990s in a poll by Village Voice and Film Comment. He’s royalty (we were lucky enough to interview him in 2015, and you should read that piece).
Known for his “Flight of the Red Balloon” (2007) remake and “Flowers of Shanghai” (1998), one of Hou’s films that kicked up his international presence into the 2000s and beyond was the dreamy, hypnotic and ethereal “Millennium Mambo” starring Shu Qi about a woman recalling her romances with past men in the neon-lit clubs of Taipei.
Well, the lavish, gorgeous film, which we featured on our lists of the Best Films of 2003 and The 50 Best International Language Movies Of the 21st Century So Far, is coming back to repertory theaters very soon, starting in New York at the Metrograph tomorrow in a new 4K restoration, as well as online via the label’s Metrograph at Home selections.
Here’s the official synopsis:
A stylish and seductive submersion into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei, Hou’s much-misunderstood marvel stars Shu Qi (The Assassin) as an aimless bar hostess drifting away from her blowhard boyfriend and towards Jack Kao’s suave, sensitive gangster. Structured as a flashback to the then-present from the then-future of 2011, it’s a transfixing trance-out of a movie, drenched in club lights, ecstatic endorphin-rush exhilaration, and a nagging undercurrent of ennui.
The new “Millennium Mambo” 4K restoration opens December 23 at Metrograph and presumably starts expanding to other markets after that. Watch the new trailer below; we cannot recommend it enough.
