Tsai Ming-liang  

Taiwan 
 

Although his debut reminded critics of the quiet naturalism of master director Hou Hou-hsien, Tsai quickly chose to eschew realistic portrayals of Taiwanese life in favour of a heavily symbolic and stylised approach. It was Tsai's bleak second movie, Vive l'amour that saw him break through.  

Vive won the Golden Lion at Venice in 1994, and garnered a lot of exposure on the festival circuit. The film was an Antonioni-esque story of urban alienation in modern Taiwan, and centred on the desperate sexual affairs of three people who casually inhabit a show-house in a Taipei towerblock.  

Dialogue was cut down to a minimum (no-one speaks for the first 15 minutes), and a stylised approach to movement was used to delineate the relationships between the characters. 

His follow-up, The River, was heavy on symbolism and took a more internal approach to the problem of isolation. Whereas Vive focussed on the protagonist's relations with other people, The River delved into his mind and imagination. There were, however, some  comments on alienation within the family: one daring scene featured a young boy being masturbated by his father in a steam bath, the only way they could find to connect. 

Tsai's The Hole, according to the film's producer, Peggy Chiao, is "the culmination of everything that Tsai has tried to say so far.  The Hole focuses completely on two characters – communication with the outside world is almost totally cut off. On a wider scale, the film is about the contamination – political and social – of Taiwan," continues Chiao.  "It's also an exploration of marginalised people, whether they be poor, or sick. People who have been deserted by the world." 

A plumber leaves a hole in the floor of a man's apartment in a Taipei housing block. Through the hole, the man begins to observe the woman in the flat below. Meanwhile, a disease called Taiwanese fever is sweeping through the country, a plague which leads to people shutting themselves away. 

The government declares the two characters should evacuate the building, which is in a danger zone, but they don't comply. "There are these two very lonely people living in a deserted apartment block," says Chiao. "All the time the audience is thinking, 'why don't they leave?'" Then the man becomes attached to the woman he watches through the hole. 

Chiao thinks that viewers – especially Western viewers – may find a religious, transcendental, subtext to The Hole.  But Tsai remains a pessimist and says the idea behind the decaying world of The Hole comes from the socio-political state of today's Taiwan. "If you live in Taiwan, you will naturally feel pessimism," Tsai says. "We have paid a heavy price for the take-off of Taiwan's economy. Asian Governments lack long-term vision and regard for the environment and for culture – they have a plundering mentality." 

Interspersed throughout the movie are lively dance numbers inspired by the popular Mandarin-language musicals of the 50s. It's a minimalist film, but some of Grace Chan's songs are used in some dance sequences, says producer Chiao.  

The two leads, Mr Lee Kang-shen and Ms Yang Kui-mei, are both regular Tsai collaborators. Lee has an internalised quality that almost renders him invisible, a quality that suits Tsai's intentions. Tsai says that many of his characters' qualities come directly from Lee. 

Yang, meanwhile,  is arguably the finest actress currently working in Chinese-language cinema. Her range is enormous – a gritty prostitute in Wang Tung's Hill Of No Return, a sexually repressed teacher in Ang Lee's Eat Drink Man Woman, the detached property agent in Tsai's Vive l'amour, to name but three of her recent films. 

While he was preparing the film, Tsai said that certain parts of it would be "very heavy". Yet, although critics have fun deconstructing his films, he is at pains to point out that he thinks his symbolism is actually very simple. "My films are not particularly difficult," he says. "It's very easy to understand my use of symbols." Richard James Havis