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Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated) Binding: VHS Tape EAN: 9780794202811 Format: Color, Subtitled, NTSC ISBN: 0794202810 Label: Fox Lorber Manufacturer: Fox Lorber Number Of Items: 1 Publisher: Fox Lorber Release Date: February 04, 2003 Running Time: 115 minutes Sales Rank: 29724 Studio: Fox Lorber
Description: A mother, father and son live together in a small apartment in Taipei but lead very separate lives. The son, Xiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng) drifts through life without a job; the mother is an elevator operator having an affair with a man who pirates pornographic movies; and the father pursues illicit pleasures in the city's gay saunas and is on a mission to stop the leaking water from the apartment upstairs. When the son is stricken with an agonizing pain in his neck and shoulders, seemingly from taking an ill advised dunk in the polluted Tansui River, the family is driven on a quest to alleviate the son's pain.
Amazon.com: The strange, elliptical movies of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang (The Hole, What Time Is It There?) defy encapsulation. A description of The River will tell you about a female elevator operator, her pornography-selling lover, and her husband who goes to gay bathhouses. Her unhappy scooter-riding son runs into an actress he knew a few years earlier; she brings him to the set of a movie she's working on, where the young man gets a role as a corpse floating in a river. But none of that amounts to a plot in any conventional sense, and that summary doesn't capture the slow but hypnotic pace of Tsai's movies, or how the seemingly ordinary images will burn themselves into your memory. The lack of conventional action will frustrate some viewers, but others will find deadpan humor and an eerie cinematic poetry. --Bret Fetzer
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Ha ha, wow.
This film is an unbelievable masterpiece. Tsai Ming-Liang continues to outdo himself at every turn, creating yet another of the best films since the advent of sound. His quiet but relentless attack on the entire idea of the modern narrative film would do Eisenstein proud. Anyone doubting the supreme genius with which he seeks to confound the cinema illiterate West need only read the other reviews on this page. The fact that one confused reviewer had the unmitigated audacity to trash this film after appointing himself "Enlightened One" had me holding my sides with laughter.
Rating: - 50/50
This is simply the kind of film that one will either like or dislike. I really can't see there being two-ways about it.
It has only been a year or so since I emersed myself into the world of independent/international/arthouse/whatever you want to call it, films. The River is not for the novice!
I forced myself to finish the film because I felt it was important to at least give the director's vision a chance before judging. I am glad I did. The film has no music in it, all you get is the natural ambiance of the characters surroundings. That kinda leaves a haunting echo over each ... Read More
Rating: - Dead in the water . . .
This downbeat film about a family in Taipei is open to many interpretations, which will make it intriguing for viewers who like movies that make them wonder about what they are watching. There is something of a storyline in this film - a young man falls mysteriously ill and his parents attempt to find a cure for him - but its chief purpose seems to be little more than the thread on which each scene is strung together. Not that there's anything wrong with that . . .
What we see is three people living in the same small apartment who are almost completely estranged from each other, rarely ... Read More
Rating: - Beautiful film by a brilliant filmmaker
Highly recommended if you are a fan of Antonioni, Tarkovsky, Tarr or other filmmakers who utilize time (especially slow pacing) and landscape to help develop the internal states of their characters. Tsai's films are very meditative and contemplative; they help you to understand a character by observing their daily routine and most intimate moments played out in full. His works are challenging, but well worth the effort.
Rating: - You Won't Forget It
This movie is not what we Westerners are accustomed to in movies, therefore we tend to dismiss it. We like all emotions openly displayed. lots of dialogue and the plot must be resolved.
You will find none of this in this movie, but it is certainly worth viewing and once you understand the reason for the lack of interaction between characters, it does make sense.
Another aspect that makes the movie difficult is the long scenes when nothing is happening on the screen. That was the director's approach.
The family is totally disfunctional as a unit. The parents never speak ... Read More
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