Can a film be exquisite and, at the same time, less than one hoped for? This question arose as “Three Times” unfolded.
Taiwanese master director Hou Hsiso-hsien’s willfully restrained three-part meditation on love, loss and yearning opens in the mid-’60s to the finest use of the Platters’ “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” since “American Graffiti.” Before journey’s end the movie visits the years 1911 and 2005.
In 2004, Hou’s “Millennium Mambo” played in town. Filled with its share of romantic innuendo and pining, that stunner hinted at the next film to come. Shot by Mark Lee Ping-bing, “Three Times” is just as aesthetically pleasing. It is also more formally precious.
“Kaohsiung. 1966,” states the opening intertitle. May is the slender new hostess at a pool parlor. One day, she reads a letter a man named Chen left for the previous hostess, Miss Haruko. Called up for armed service, the young soldier wanted to thank her for some of his happiest times.
When Chen returns in hopes of finding Haruko, she’s left. But the lovely May is there. Over a game of billiards, the two seem to connect. He promises to write her.
This second letter is not unlike the one Chen sent the prior hostess. And writer Chu Tien-Wen is savvy about how easily the young man professes his romantic hopes. Perhaps this is why, when Chen returns to the pool hall, May has moved on.
But he seeks her out. When he finds her, there’s sweet and authentic understatement to the possibility of something deeper transpiring. They are tentative. What we witness is such a first date.
He misses the last train that will return him to his base on time. They walk across a rain-soaked street to a bus stop.
That’s it. As love stories go, it’s more a beginning than conclusive. And time and again in “Three Times,” that is the point. Shu Qi and Chang Chen play the leads in the trio of resonating tales.
In “A Time for Freedom,” she is a courtesan and he is a diplomat. Because he’s an honorable man, he will not make her his concubine though he wants her.
Hou tells their story as if it were a silent movie, albeit a richly hued one. Their mouths move beneath a traditional music score. Hou renders their conversations with intertitles. (“Three Times” is in Mandarin with English subtitles.)
“A Time for Youth” finds the most modern incarnation of the two living in Taipei in 2005. He takes photos. She sings. A text message delivered via cellphone alerts her girlfriend to a likely infidelity and sets in motion hard but also exciting changes.
Hou begins each installment of “Three Times” with a visual prologue, a scene that repeats within the actual tale.
Letters – on paper, via e-mail – play a profound role in connecting the “would be if only” lovers in all three shorts. As loving as the camera can be, director Hou constantly reminds us that the image can keep lovers apart. By embracing them within a frame, it can reveal their distance.
“Three Times” | ** 1/2 RATING
R for sexual dialogue|2 hour, 15 minutes|ROMANTIC DRAMA|Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien; written by Chu Tien-wen; photography by Mark Lee Ping-bing; starring Shu Qi and Chang Chen|Opens today at the Starz FilmCenter.
