Contexts | First Impressions

We continue with our discussion of Edward Yang films in relation to Hou Hsiao-hsien’s work. We discuss the film in relation to Postmodernism, Existentialism, contingency, nausea, chance. We note that Fredric Jameson wrote on Sartre, Postmodernism, and this film. We discuss, Yang’s characteristic visuals, his distinctive way of filming, narrating, and style of characterisation; a kind of mosaic sights, sounds, scenes which the viewer is left to piece together. We continue to be entranced.

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Images referred to in the film:

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Characteristically Yang

Images of books and shots through a curtain are characteristic of The Terrorizers. This condenses them both.

José Arroyo

Continuing with our discussion of Hsin Chi films generously made available in wonderful versions by the Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute. This time the focus is on DANGEROUS YOUTH. We offer a bit of background on Hsin Chi; discuss how the film is similar to Nagisa Oshima’s CRUEL STORY OF YOUTH, Godard’s BREATHLESS, BEAT GIRL, and all the motorcycle gang Roger Corman films of the mid-sixties. The film has the thematics and energy of pre-code sex melodramas but surrounded by a rock-pop soundtrack stylised and transformed by foregrounding the sax. DANGEROUS YOUTH is visually inventive, with fascinating compositions, interesting intimations of nudity through shadows, compositions that make the most of the architecture to suggest interior states and external perspectives. The story of a young girl groomed into prostitution for money by the pimp she loves and the richer woman who is pulling his strings, is given sexy, noirish form and fascinating gender politics. Does anyone believe the end?