The Hole (洞 Dong)

Director: Tsai Ming-Liang/Cai Mingliang

Screenplay: Tsai Ming-Liang/Cai Mingliang, Yang Ping-ying

Cinematographer: Liao Peng-Jung

Producer: Caroline Benjo, Peggy Chiao, Carole Scotta

Cast: Lee Kang-Sheng, Yang Kuei-Mei, Miao Tien,

Production company: Arc Light Films/Central Motion Picture Corporation/Chinese Television Company/Haut & Court/La Sept ARTE, 1998

Description: DVD/VHS; color; sound; 93 minutes. Commissioned as part of the 2000 Seen By... millennium project. Winner of the FIPRESCI award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.

Synopsis:

The final days of the year 1999 prove to be a bleak and chaotic time in Taipei. A widespread virus, "Taiwan Fever", has crippled the city, reducing its victims into exhibiting unusual, cockroach-like behavior. Quarantined areas have been established, and the uninfected residents are repeatedly encouraged through news broadcasts to evacuate into government arranged temporary housing until the spread of the virus can be controlled. But some defiant residents refuse to abandon their homes, and as a last resort, the government has threatened to cut off the water supply and garbage collection to these quarantined areas on January 1, 2000. A young man (Lee Kang-sheng) and his downstairs neighbor (Yang Kuei-Mei) have decided to remain in their dilapidated tenements and ride out the figurative (and literal) storm. One day, a plumber knocks on the young man's door, looking for the source of a leak in the apartment below. The man leaves his apartment to open his small grocery store and feed an abandoned cat in the desolate town market, only to return home and find that the plumber has left a gaping hole through the concrete slab floor into the woman's downstairs apartment. Initially, the intrusive young man sees the hole as a convenient mechanism for observing his unsuspecting neighbor: mopping the floors from the water leak, stockpiling toilet paper in a spare room, eating instant noodle soup. However, as the isolation of their oppressive environment continues to erode their psyche, the hole becomes their only source for human contact - their last, desperate means of connection. (Acquarello, Strictly Film School.)

About the director:

Tsai Ming-Liang (1957-):

Along with Edward Yang and Hou Hsiao-hsien, Tsai Ming-liang became one of Taiwan's most prominent directors during the 1990s. His films regularly appeared in festivals around the globe and he received lavish praise from film critics worldwide. Born in Malaysia in 1957, Tsai moved to Taiwan 20 years later and graduated from the Chinese Cultural University in 1982. For the next ten years, he supported himself by working in theater and writing screenplays for films and television. He directed his first feature in 1992, Rebels of the Neon God, which, with its tough but tender depictions of disaffected youth, earned him comparisons to Rainer Werner Fassbinder. In addition to Fassbinder, Tsai was also influenced by François Truffaut, to whom he was exposed as a student. Like Truffaut, who developed a collaboration with actor Jean-Pierre Léaud over the course of several projects, Tsai cast Lee Kang-Sheng as the lead in all of his films. (Lee appeared with Léaud in What Time is it There? as an homage to Truffaut.) Although not a professional actor, Lee, who claimed his own devoted cult of admirers among Tsai's fans, exuded a unique presence onscreen and a naturalness before the camera that Tsai used to great effect. His style differed from his idol Truffaut's, however. As with his countrymen Yang and Hou, Tsai preferred long takes, few close-ups, and sparse dialogue. And like another of his influences, Michelangelo Antonioni, he displayed a genius for placing the camera at exactly the right spot and letting the action unfold before it. Rebels of the Neon God would become a template for the rest of his films, all of which, in some way, were about loneliness and walked a tightrope between deep sadness and deadpan humor. In his second film, Vive L'Amour, three isolated Taipei dwellers connect in odd ways via a vacant apartment. In the much more unsettling The River, a young man develops a debilitating neck ailment that may or may not be psychosomatic after he is discovered by a movie director and asked to play a corpse floating face down in the dirty Tamsui River. The Hole concerns a mysterious epidemic sweeping Taipei as the new millennium approaches, and features a number of surreal musical numbers. Perhaps his most humorous film, What Time is it There? features Lee as a man on the street selling watches and who becomes obsessed with the idea that Paris exists in a completely different time. In addition to his features, Tsai also made a number of videos and short films, the latest of which, The Skywalk Is Gone, was set near where a skywalk (that served as an important location) in What Time is it There? was demolished. The film both commemorated the skywalk and served as a bridge to the director's next feature. Tsai's honors include the FIPRESCI award at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival for The Hole, the Silver Bear at the 1996 Berlin Film Festival for The River, and the Golden Lion at the 1994 Venice Film Festival for Vive L'Amour.(Tom Vick, All Movie Guide.

About the star:

Lee Kang-Sheng (1968-) was born in Taipei into a poor family living off his father's indigent civil war veteran benefits. While his brother later became a student of film, Lee failed the entrance exam at the university and worked odd jobs as a waiter, an insurance salesman and a police lookout in front of an illegal gambling parlour. In 1989 Lee was spotted by Tsai Ming-liang on the streets of Taipei. Starting out his performance career with a little role in Tsai's TV-film All the Corners of the World (1989), Lee became Tsai-s on-screen alter ego Hsiao-Kang, the "quintessentially disoriented, spiritually impoverished, socially isolated" (Shelly Kraicer) Taipei drifter who appeared in every Tsai's feature film, including Rebels of the Neon God (1992), Vive l'Amour (1994) The River (1997), The Hole (1998), What Time Is It There? (2001), and Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003). He also starred in Lin Cheng-Sheng and Ann Hui's films. At the beginning of 2003, Tsai and Lee decided to direct two complementary shorts which later evolved into two features: Tsai's Goodbye Dragon Inn (2003) and Lee's directorial debut The Missing (2003), which garnered the New Currents Award at the Film Festival in 2003 Pusan Film Festival and a Tiger Award at the International Film Festival Rotterdam 2004.

Questions to ponder: These are a few questions suggested for you to think about while reading the assigned articles and watching the film. Please jot down ideas and notes on details or scenes you think are relevant for class discussion. 1. This film is set at the turn of the millenium. How is this significant to the film's meaning? 2. What is the meaning of the hole? 3. What role is played by the musical interludes in the film? 4. What themes do you see as important in the film? 5. How would you characterize the style of the film (e.g., film language, performance, etc.)?

Relevant readings:

Web Sources:

Tsai Ming-liang Symposium at New York Film Festival

Tsai Ming-Liang, by Darren Hughes at Sense of Cinema.

Tsai Ming-Liang by Acquarello's Strictly Film School.

An interview with Tsai Ming-liang, Director of The Hole from World Socialist Web Site.