A professional photographer and a local singer navigate a messy, non-committal relationship entangled with modern technology and heavy baggage.
The film is segmented into three parts, each representing a specific time period and employing a distinct cinematic language. The through-line is not plot, but the recurring presence of the two leads, who act as avatars for love in its various stages of viability.
Hou Hsiao-hsien shifts his directorial grammar for each segment to match the technological and emotional realities of the eras. 1966: The Rhythm of Longing three times hou hsiao hsien
If you'd like, I can , such as The Puppetmaster or A City of Sadness .
In sharp contrast, A Time for Freedom takes us back to 1911, during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. This segment is filmed as a silent movie, using intertitles to convey dialogue. Shu Qi plays a courtesan longing for manumission, while Chang Chen plays a revolutionary intellectual. The silence heightens the tension and the tragedy. Here, love is a casualty of social duty and political upheaval. The restricted movements within the brothel reflect the restricted lives of the characters, making it a somber look at a freedom that remains just out of reach. A professional photographer and a local singer navigate
Three Times is structured as an anthology of three short films, each representing a crucial juncture in 20th-century Taiwanese history. The film’s original Chinese title translates literally to "The Best of Times," a phrase tinged with a characteristic Hou melancholy: these times are "best" not because they were perfect, but because they are preserved forever in the amber of memory. 1. "A Time for Love" (1966)
Before diving into the film, it's essential to understand the filmmaker behind it. Born in 1947, Hou Hsiao-hsien is a leading figure of the , a film movement that emerged in the 1980s alongside those in Hong Kong and mainland China. This generation of filmmakers, which includes peers like Edward Yang, rejected the "healthy realism" of state-approved melodramas and instead sought a more intense engagement with Taiwan's suppressed history, identity, and everyday life. Hou Hsiao-hsien shifts his directorial grammar for each
The silent film aesthetic acts as a metaphor for the voicelessness of the Taiwanese people under colonial rule, while the rigid, formal manners of the era contrast with the longing for freedom.
. The film uses a triptych structure. It tracks a single pair of actors— Shu Qi and Chang Chen —across three distinct eras in Taiwanese history: 1966, 1911, and 2005.
The first segment, titled A Time for Love , is set in 1966. We are in a billiard hall in Kaohsiung. Chang Chen plays Chen, a conscript on leave. Shu Qi plays May, a young woman who works at the pool hall.