Millennium Mambo (15)
Screen 1, Thursday 1 Feb 2024, 19:20
- ends at 21:06
MINT 2024's opening film is a neon-drenched trip through nocturnal turn-of-the-century Taipei. Millennium Mambo stars Shu Qi as Vicky, a bar hostess losing interest in her dull, garrulous boyfriend, and attracted to the mysterious, sensual gangster Jack. Built as a flashback from ten years into the future , she finds herself afloat amidst a world of ecstatic nights out and an undertow of nagging emptiness, torn between the two men.
Like Edward Yang (whose Yi Yi is screening at 10am Sunday 4 Feb ), director Hou Hsiao-Hsien is one the major figures of Taiwanese New Wave cinema. His characteristic meditative style is front-and-centre in Millennium Mambo, aided by the presence of the sublime cinematographer Mark Lee Ping-bin, who at the time had just finished work on the classic In the Mood for Love (2001).
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