One day in the park: An old woman (Ching Lu Yi), coming back from the toilet,
has to realize her 3-year-old grandson is gone, & every effort to find him,
be it via the park's broadcasting system, with the help of the police or with
the help of coinidental passers-by lead to naught, as at nightfall she still
wanders the streets, not having found a clue.
A teenage boy (Chang Jie) meanwhile has spent the whole day in a darkened
computer-room to play computer games. it is only when the old woman asks him if
he had seen her grandson that he realizes he has lost his grandpa (Tien Miao)
as well. When they join forces on their search, they can unfortunately come up
with no results either ... but might that be grandson & granddfather who
walk by just a few meters away but obscured from their view ?
The director of this movie, Lee Kang-Sheng, was discovered as an actor by
director (& executive producer of this film) Tsai Ming Liang, so it
shouldn't be surprising that Lee Kang-sheng uses some of his mentor's favourite
methods in his debut: Long-lasting shots, limited acting, little in the way of
action or actual (that is obvious) storytelling, instead letting the succession
of in itself rather meaningless long scenes make up a drama of its own.
However, what became beautiful & emotionally involving narratives in
Tsai Ming-liang's films like Dong/The Hole or Bu
San/Good bye, Dragon Inn, does not
manage to fall together into one story here, even though the emotional content
(with an old woman looking for her helpless grandson) seem,s to be much higher
here to begin with - which might be the main flaw of the movie: pretty much
after a quarter of an hour of a woman hysterically running around looking for
the boy this subplot ceases to be involving & (& that might sound
heartless, but isn't) starts to get annoying. The other subplot - about the
teenager looking for his granddad - on the other hand doesn't take off until
very late in the movie, & way too much time is spent with him playing
computer-games ... which is pretty much annoying for everyone (like me) who's
not into computer-games in the first place.
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