The River
Non-communication and loneliness are the key themes of this film, with Tsai’s regular leading actor Lee Kang-sheng playing a young man in a taciturn family in metropolitan Taipei. Winner of the Silver Bear (Special Jury Prize) in Berlin.
Xiao-kang shares an apartment with his parents in Taipei. The three of them each lead separate lives. Through a classmate, Xiao-kang finds himself on the set of an Ann Hui film, where he is allowed to play a floating corpse in the polluted river Tanshui as an extra. Afterwards he makes love to his classmate. Next day he has a severe pain in his neck and shoulders. Massage, acupuncture, even exorcism don’t help and the pain just gets worse and worse.
Tsai Ming-liang made an uncompromising film about non-existent family relationships and existential despair in Taipei. The inability to communicate has rarely been portrayed more powerfully, unless it was in Tsai’s previous films.