Vive L'Amour (Tsai Ming-Liang, 94)

Vive L'Amour

directed by Tsai Ming-liang

1994, Taiwan, 118m, DCP

Brand new 2K restoration!

One of the most acclaimed Taiwanese filmmakers of his generation, Tsai Ming-liang’s second feature film served to launch him onto the international stage as a major talent, and is a classic of 1990s art cinema. When a burial-plot salesman (Tsai’s muse Lee Kang-sheng) steals a key from a lock, a triangle of longing emerges between himself, a street vendor and a real-estate agent, taking form in a series of clandestine erotic encounters inside the vacant apartment. Tsai’s highly mesmerizing, contemplative style—a seemingly effortless command of deadpan staging and duration—results in one of his most haunting, sexy and accessible portraits of urban alienation.

Winner: Golden Lion, Venice Film Festival 1994

“Striking and beautiful…remains one of the key modernist works of the Taiwanese New Wave. Working principally without dialogue–with a feeling for both modern architecture and contemporary urban despair that often recalls Michaelangelo Antonioni–it gathers force slowly but builds to a powerful and devastating finale.” -Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

"Loneliness here is always interwoven with real estate—not a typical theme for an auteur, but Tsai makes it his own by elevating his enclosed spaces, often abandoned or their ownership fraught, to the level of costars." -Travis Jeppesen, Artforum

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