Lee Kang-Sheng Movies

Taiwanese filmmaker Lee Kang-Sheng voices his growing dissatisfaction with consumer culture in this tale of a man sunken into a deep depression after losing all of his money in the stock market. There once was a time when Ah Jie (Lee) could afford to fill his luxurious apartment with the best designer furniture that money could buy, but these days the items that once signaled his status are now just painful reminders of the past that slipped away so easily. Continually puffing on joints rolled from the numerous marijuana plants he grows, Ah Jie later phones in to a helpline and soon begins baring his soul to volunteer counselor Chyi (Jane Liao). In the course of their conversation Ah Jie falls a little in love with his virtual savior, but she is just a voice on the telephone and nearby betel nut girl Shin (Yin Shin) is a more tangible companion. But while sex with Shin offers Ah Jie a momentary reprieve from his deep malaise, the pain of his bleak reality is never too far away. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The subjects of love, sex, and lust in modern-day Taiwan are given a surreal, kaleidoscopic treatment in Tsai Ming-Liang's experimental feature film. The Wayward Cloud contains no plot per se, but rather a succession of strange set pieces in which young lovers connect, disconnect, and attempt to find each other amidst a city water shortage. Consisting of nearly no dialogue, the film mixes the outrageous, the explicit, and the banal in a more radically experimental fashion than the director's previous efforts. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

The city of Taipei becomes an alienating dystopia in this minimalist directorial debut from Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng. A grandmother (Lu Yi-chih) loses her grandson in a park and spends the remainder of the day searching for him. Meanwhile, a troubled teenager's grandfather similarly disappears. The two searchers wander the city until, eventually, their paths cross. The Missing shared the New Currents award with the Iranian film Tiny Snowflakes at the 2003 Pusan International Film Festival. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide

Ann Hui, a prominent filmmaker in the former British colony of Hong Kong, reflects on the political history of her country in a remarkable work, Qian Yan Wan Yu. The film centers on four people involved in the political activism of 1980's who reflect on their turbulent past from the vantage point of the disillusionment of the 1990's. The story begins with a young woman, Sow, fleeing into an empty tunnel wearing only a hospital gown. She is suffering from amnesia, and the memory she has lost includes a disappointing love story and a decade of social struggle in Hong Kong. Her old friend and admirer Tung, who is now working in a home for the retarded, is there to help her. In a flashback we see Sow as a fourteen-year-old, stealing Tung's wallet in a video arcade; this is their first meeting. Sow's relatives are fishermen who live on a boat and are not allowed to settle in Hong Kong. When she loses her family to a fire, she throws herself to the cause of fighting for the rights of the boat people. At the same time, she is obsessed by an idealist student, Yau. Ah Kam, a priest influenced by Marxism, is their mentor. Tung, on the other hand, prefers to play his guitar. By the mid Eighties, Hong Kong is on its way to a political awakening, and Sow and Tung are members of an activist group with Yau as their leader and Ah Kam as their conscience. But Sow is unable to get over her crush on Yau, despite the fact he is involved with someone else; Sow, however, is unaware of Tung's love for her and treats him like a good friend, as Tung finds comfort in his music. Yau wants to fight the system from within and runs for public office, eventually winning, while Ah Kam remains a pacifist radical and stages hunger strikes. Sow gets what she wants, but ends up in a border clinic having an abortion. One day Tung leaves to wander into China, promising Sow they will meet three months after. June 4, 1989, the day of the crackdown on Tiananmen Square, is for Sow the day when her political and emotional lives come crashing down. Street theatre sequences, which chronicle the life of real life activist Ng Chung Yin frame the story and offer oblique comments and parallel situations that pull the events of the characters' lives in historical context. Taking off from real events and real people, Hui relates the public lives of the characters as well as their hidden desires and half-denied sexual yearnings, producing a very credible account of the times and the people. Audiences who are not too familiar with Hong Kong's social and political history may have difficulties following the thread of events. Nelson Yu's photography is exceptional. Taiwanese star, Lee Kang-Sheng, who is familiar to the West for her roles in the award-winning films of Tsai Ming-Liang, plays Tung. Qian Yan Wan Yu competed at the 49th International Berlin Film Festival in 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

At the 1998 Cannes Film Festival, this Taiwanese-French drama won a FIPRESCI Award, given by international critics. Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang previously won top awards for his 1994 Vive l'amour (at Venice) and 1996 The River (at Berlin). High strangeness is evident in the tale, originally initiated as part of the French TV series of one-hour end-of-millennium dramas. As an epidemic spreads through Taipei, virus victims display odd symptoms. A man (Lee Kang-sheng) who runs a food store with few customers lives in a shabby building in a quarantined section, and a woman (Yang Kuei-mei) in the same building has a withdrawn existence. A plumber, checking a leak, makes a hole in the man's floor and leaves; the man then observes his neighbors through the hole. The film features four musical fantasy sequences that recall Hong Kong musical films of the '50s. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

The underlying premise of this subtle character study of a rural Taiwanese family seems to hinge on the lead character's grim notion that fate may be a blind alley and that life may have no higher purpose. Ku-cheng is fully grown and married with a daughter, but still lives on his poor family's farm where they make a meager but consistent living. Ku-cheng is not unhappy until his beloved wife Ah-hsui dies bearing his son Ah-sheng leaving Ku-cheng bitter and uncaring about the future. In this fatalistic mood, he begins working as a laborer and leaves his children for his parents to raise. He meets and begins a fruitless two year affair with the widow Ah-yun, who knows that Ku-cheng will never marry her. Many years pass. Tragedy strikes when Ku-cheng's mother becomes bedridden after a stroke. Ku-cheng's daughter dutifully cares for her, becoming increasingly further behind in school. Her little brother, cares little for the situation. He is lazy, and irresponsible. The grandmother becomes the center on which the rest of the drama turns. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide