Good Men, Good Women

• Director: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
• AMG Rating:
• Genre: Drama
• Movie Type: Political Drama, Family Drama
• Themes: Totalitarian States, Haunted By the Past
• Main Cast: Annie Shizuka Inoh
• Release Year: 1995
• Country: TW/JP
• Run Time: 108 minutes

Plot

Hou Hsiao Hsien rounds out his loose trilogy on Taiwanese history -- The Puppet Master dealt with Japan's occupation of the island and City of Sadness focuses on Chiang Kai-shek's bloody occupation immediately following the war -- with this mediation on the anti-Communist campaign during the 1950s. The story is ostensibly about the real life events of Chiang Bi-yu (Annie Shizuka Inoh), who ventures to China with her new husband, Chung Hao-tung (Lim Giong), to join the anti-Japanese resistance along with three other friends. Once in China, they are immediately suspected of being Japanese spies and are almost executed. While working with the resistance, Chiang is forced to give up her first-born child -- the call of the motherland had no time for motherhood. When the war ends, they return to Taiwan. Chung takes a job as the principal of a school in the south of the island and starts a Marxist journal called the Enlightenment. As the Red Army swept down the Korean peninsula, Chiang Kai-shek -- at the behest of the Americans -- instituted the White Terror, which rooted out communists of every color. Soon Chung and Chiang are rounded up and brutally interrogated. Chiang is eventually released to her small brood of children while Chung is thrown against the wall and shot. Hou complicates this narrative by layering an additional story line about an actress, Liang Ching (also played by Annie Shizuka Inoh), who is rehearsing for a movie about the life of Chiang Bi-yu. Still reeling from the murder of her gangster boyfriend, Ah Wei (Jack Kao), three years previous, Liang is being faxed daily pages of her stolen diary, forcing her to confront her past. Soon the borders between the lives of Chiang and Liang become less and less distinct. This film was dubbed the single best film of the 1990s by Cahier du Cinema. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Review

Hou Hsiao Hsien further explores territory he staked out in the previous two installments of his trilogy. Just as he collapses the distinction between narrative and documentary in The Puppet Master, Hsien includes a dizzying array of story lines that both questions and enhances the veracity of Chiang Bi-yu's biography. Just as he touches on the complex relationship between the past and the present in City of Sadness and The Puppet Master, Hsien foregrounds it in Good Men, Good Women. The past cannot quite stay dead in this film. The primary narrative is a remembrance of a historical moment that the Taiwanese government just as soon forget, while contemporary actress Liang is plagued by phantom faxes, reminders of her own checkered past. In fact, Hsien's entire trilogy is less about events Taiwan's past than how to understand history in general. Good Men, Good Women, along with the other two films, are awash in disparate languages -- Mandarin, Japanese, Taiwanese, Cantonese -- and are filled with references to personal diaries and other forms of personal documentation. All subvert the notion of a single unified historical narrative. This aside, Good Men, Good Women is a stunning film to look at. Hsien moves away from the rigid formalism of his previous works in favor of a somewhat looser style. Overall, Good Men, Good Women is a striking, ambitious work that merits the highest of praises. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Cast

Jack Kao - Ah Wei; Lim Giong - Chung Hao-Tung; Annie Shizuka Inoh - Liang Ching

Credit

Hou Hsiao-Hsien - Director, Liao Ching-song - Editor, Kazuyoshi Okuyama - Executive Producer, Phil Heywood - Musical Direction/Supervision, Ron Purvis - Musical Direction/Supervision, Ben Hsieh - Producer, Katsuhiro Mizuno - Producer, Shozo Ichiyama - Producer, Chu Tien-wen - Screenwriter

Similar Movies

The Blue Kite; To Live; The Last Emperor; Yellow Earth; Wo Zhe Yi Bei Zi; Hong Qi Pu; Da Di Zhi Zhi

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