The Hole

An unnamed epidemic spreads through Taipei, a district is quarantined and the water is cut off. The rain does not stop. In one building a plumber opens a hole in an upstairs floor and leaves the job half done; the hole connects two flats and two lonely people. The film is not interested in the epidemic. It is interested in the impossibility of contact: the neighbours can see each other through the hole, do not speak, cannot get closer. Tsai Ming-liang tells it almost without words. The form splits in two. The reality side is silent, long-take and damp; against it, the woman occasionally slips into fantasy and lip-syncs the songs of the fifties Hong Kong star Grace Chang, complete with costumes and dancers. Even those numbers never leave the building; they take place in the corridors and stairwells. The film exists because of a commission: the French producer Haut et Court's project 2000, Seen By, which asked directors for a film each about the coming millennium. This was Tsai's answer, and it won the International Critics' Prize at Cannes in 1998. Yang Kuei-mei and Lee Kang-sheng star. Who it is for: viewers who like slow cinema, Tsai, and strange musical ruptures. Who it is not for: anyone looking for dialogue and event. The film barely speaks and stays in the same two flats for an hour and forty minutes.