Good Men, Good Women

The actress Liang Ching is preparing to play Chiang Bi-yu, an activist executed in the fifties. At the same time somebody unidentified faxes her pages from her own old diary every day. The film threads three layers: the black and white scenes of the film being made, her present, and her past with a dead lover. It is not interested in a historical life story. It is interested in who memory belongs to: if a country does not speak about its past, that past cannot be performed either. The more Liang Ching plays the role, the more she faces the hole in her own life. The form is built on long takes, a still camera and unannounced shifts between time frames; following it is deliberately difficult. This is the last part of Hou Hsiao-hsien's trilogy on Taiwanese history, after A City of Sadness and The Puppetmaster. The film is dedicated to the political victims of the fifties, the White Terror period; Chiang Bi-yu and her husband had fought the Japanese in China and were arrested as communists when they came home. That period went undiscussed in Taiwan for forty years. Annie Shizuka Inoh plays both the actress and the activist, with Jack Kao and Lim Giong in the cast. Who it is for: viewers interested in Hou's cinema and Taiwanese history. Who it is not for: anyone who wants a clear narrative. The film wanders between three periods without explanation and is heavy going for anyone unfamiliar with the background.