Ai qing wan sui = Vive l'amour [Widescreen]

A film to capture the senses “Vive L’amour” is visually stylistic and narratively minimalist, where long silences are interrupted by the sound of running water, a cassette tape being inserted into a recorder, the inhaling of a cigarette or the intense breathing of one in the act of committing suicide. It is a tale of three lost souls in the equally soul-less modern city of Taipei whose lives repeatedly and unwittingly cross paths in the same uptown luxury, albeit sterile, apartment: Hsaio-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), a gay salesman of crematorium niches coming to terms with his own homosexuality, Ah-jung (Chen Chao-jung) a street hawker of imitation designer goods and Mai Lin (Yang Kuei-mei) a struggling real estate agent. A sense of desperation lingers beneath the normality of routine daily life of each of the protagonists, drawing the three together and enmeshing their souls in a most unlikely liaison. Evocative and melancholic, “Vive L’amour” is beautifully directed by Tsai Ming Liang (The River) who is recognised as a major player in the New Taiwanese Cinema, with superb cinematography by Liao Peng-Jung and Lin Ming-Kuo. (Award: Golden Lion at the 1994 Venice Film Festival) In Mandarin with English subtitles.