Goodbye South, Goodbye

Kao runs small operations: he wants to open a nightclub, invests in a pig farm, collects gambling debts. With him are a young partner who does not know what he is doing and that man's restless girlfriend. The three move constantly between the north and south of Taiwan and no plan holds. The subject is not crime but movement that arrives nowhere. The characters are always travelling, by motorbike, train and car, and nothing changes where they arrive; the film holds that repetition deliberately long. The form rests on long takes and shooting from behind. Hou Hsiao-hsien places the camera at the characters' backs and follows; the celebrated motorbike passage runs for minutes and narrates almost nothing. Most of the information comes from conversations outside the frame. It belongs to the director's contemporary films of the nineties. Turning to the present after his historical epics was treated as a break, and the film sits among works about the emptiness that followed Taiwan's development. Lim Giong wrote the music and takes a role; he was a well-known musician in Taiwan at the time. Jack Kao plays Kao. Who it is for: viewers who like slow cinema and Hou Hsiao-hsien. Who it is not for: anyone looking for narrative; the film disperses its plot on purpose and explains none of its characters.