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Rating: Just to set the record straight, Tsai Ming-liang was the one who made Vive l'Amour, the 1994 winner of the Venetian Lion, an unidentified object in its superhuman ruthlessness. And the unveiling of "life's discomfort" continues without consideration of this spatiotemporal destructuring that is the film in question.
The apparent immobility of everything happening in the stories of the Taiwanese (really Malaysian) instead creates a psychic vortex that with its stillness forces us to participate in the imperceptible movements of eternity. There is this sacred waiting for the miracle to happen, when the appearance of Jean-Pierre Léaud makes us feel that we are already the miracle.
The time zones adapted to osmosis for the need of an otherworldly feeling of communion of solitudes. The projection of death, which in the end remains the most vivid manifestation of reality in the certainty of its everlasting reappearance. Who is the one I see in the mirror if not the love I missed with my divine part?
And so, one tries to survive with tricks where the illusion of love is pursued, even if then they rob you of the briefcase with the samples, even if a "stolen kiss" plunges you further into the existential abyss, even if the memory of Antoine Doinel as a boy is what keeps you more inside the absurdity of reality when you understand that Jean-Pierre Léaud is playing himself.
Conventions are suspended, with the director more than stripping the appearance, covering it with divine mercy and transforming it into active compassion, with the help of the music from "The 400 Blows". There is no pity, no hope, no good sentiments on the surface, no tabloid-style pain.
Silence remains, suspension remains, complete surrender opens to a purity that deeply moves us, creating a synergy with the story where we are all there to move the hands of all the clocks, à la "recherche" of a soul reset. Who knows if it shouldn’t work, who knows... Le jour de gloire est arrivé?
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