Chen Shiang-Chyi Movies

A homeless Chinese itinerant is attacked by thugs in Kuala Lampur, only to fall in with a group of kind but curious Bangladeshi men and other fascinating denizens of the smog-soaked city in director Tsai Ming-liang's minimalist mediation on contemporary life in the Malaysian capitol. Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng) has been injured in a brutal street attack, and after being brought to the crumpling abode of a group of Bangladeshi men, he is nursed back to help on the musty mattress of his benevolent rescuer Rawang (Norman Bin Atun). Upon gaining the strength to venture out on his own, Hsaio-kang makes the acquaintance of pretty Chinatown waitress Chyi (Chen Siang-chyi) - who currently works and lives with her female boss (Pearlly Chua). In another part of the city, a paralyzed man (also played by Lee) is tended to by a team of nurses before being moved from the hospital to the women's tenement. When a toxic fog descends upon the city and the citizens are sent running for cover, Hsaio-kang finds his already complicated relationship with his three new acquaintances taking on a whole new, and decidedly surreal, dimension. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In a cavernous movie palace, King Hu's classic 1968 film Dragon Inn plays for a sparse crowd. As the movie progresses, the ticket-taker makes dinner, cleans the bathroom, and checks in on the projectionist. Audience members wander in and out, occasionally interacting in the restroom or the vast hallways that surround the theater proper. Minimally plotted, Tsai Ming-Liang's film is a poetic, dryly humorous portrait of a place and its denizens, and an homage to a director who influenced his career. ~ Tom Vick, All Movie Guide

Master Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang directs this look at three people looking for human connection. Hsiao-kang (Tsai regular Lee Kang-sheng) is a young man who sells watches from a briefcase in front of Taipei's train station. When his father (Mio Tien) suddenly dies at the beginning of the film, it sends Hsiao-kang and his mother, Lu, on two radically different trajectories. His grieving mother becomes obsessed with the return of her dead husband's spirit. Hsiao-kang starts to urinate into plastic bags and bottles rather than risk bumping into his father's ghost in the middle of the night. Around that same time, Hsiao-kang encounters an aggressive, though beautiful, lass named Shiang-chyi (Chen Shiang-chyi) who is travelling in a couple of days to Paris. Entranced by the girl, he reluctantly sells her his own watch even though he believes that item has some connection to his father. The encounter leaves with Hsiao-kang with a fixation that Paris is in another time. Soon, he is changing each and every clock he can find back seven hours to Parisian time, forging an obscure connection to Shiang-chyi. Shiang-chyi herself finds Paris to be little different from Taipei in terms of alienation and isolation. Though she has run ins with several people, including an irate Frenchman in the middle of a lover's tiff and none other than Jean-Pierre Leaud in a cemetery, she only finds some comfort when she meets a woman from Hong Kong (Cecila Yip) who generously shares her hotel room with her. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Separated from her husband, lonely dress-designer Ju-feng (Chen Shiang-chyi) hopes to spend time with her brother Chuen-sheng (Lee Kang-sheng), but when he returns from military service, he chooses instead to steal from their father, play the sax, and hang out with Taipei hookers. Mei-li (Chang Pen-yu) steals Ju-feng's cell phone, with the result that the two know each other only through phone conversations. Coincidentally, Chuen-sheng has sex with Mei-li, telling her in passing how he once slept with his sister. Unaware that Chuen-sheng is Ju-feng's brother, Mei-li uses no name when she relates this anecdote to Ju-feng. Later, Chuen-sheng introduces Mei-li to his father and sister, and Ju-feng is stunned when she finally begins to jigsaw together all the connections. In Mandarin and Hokkien dialogue. Shown at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Tsai Ming-Liang's The River, the Taiwanese master's third feature, opens with a chance encounter between Xiao-Kang (Lee Kang-Sheng) and an old friend (Chen Shiang-Chyi), an unexpected meeting that sets this bleak and ultimately disturbing film on its course. Persuaded to accompany his friend to a film set where she works as a production assistant, Xiao-Kang is recruited by the director to play a corpse floating in a polluted river. After the shoot, Xiao-Kang struggles to wash the river's stench off -- and begins to feel a twinge in his neck. Meanwhile, the movie shifts its attention to two other people, a middle-aged woman (Lu Hsiao-Ling) working as an elevator operator in a restaurant, and a man (Miao Tien) who alternates his time at McDonald's and a gay bathhouse. It's eventually revealed that the two are Xiao-Kang's parents, and that the three of them live together in a Taipei apartment building that's as much in need of repair as their relationship. As Xiao-Kang's neck pain lingers, the parents grow increasingly concerned and help him seek relief in both science and superstition, to no avail. A trip to a provincial healer becomes the last resort for the ailing Xiao-Kang and occasions a devastating twist that brings the movie to an unsettling close. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide