After spending much of the decade making films about Taiwan's complex and troubled history, Hou Hsiao Hsien turns his attention to its money-obsessed present with this gangster drama. Tattooed mobster, Kao (Jack Kao), and his quick-tempered, aptly named protégé, Flathead (Lim Giong), along with their girlfriends, Ying (Hsu Kuei-ying) and Pretzel (Annie Shizuka Inoh), are desperately trying to make it big. Their master plan is open a disco in Shanghai, but that scheme seems less and less likely with each call they get from their cell phone. Corrupt mainland potentates want a king's ransom in kickbacks while Pretzel racked up a king's ransom of debt herself at the mahjong table, prompting her to make a half-hearted suicide attempt. To make ends meet, these would-be entrepreneurs make a stab at swindling the government over swine -- selling sows when they are supposed to be the more valuable studs. They wine and dine the farmers in rural backwater Chiayi only to get cut out of the deal and kidnapped by the corrupt police. This film was dubbed of the ten best films of the 1990s by numerous critics, including Susan Sontag. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Review
The opening shot of Goodbye South Goodbye, a beautiful point of view shot of a train lumbering up a winding mountain track, is identical to his wistful 1987 film Dust in the Wind. Yet while that film details the lost love and innocence among Taiwan's downwardly mobile, this film shows the disillusionment of a "have-not" desperately trying to be a "have." It is almost as if the main character of Dust, embittered and jaded, mutates into one of the luckless gangsters of South. Training his eye on modern society after a decade of unearthing Taiwan's repressed history, Hou Hsiao-Hsien presents Taiwan where everyone is racing to some destination without a coherent reason why, and where everyone is blathering on cell phones but few are actually communicating. Following this, Hsien's usually static camera sweeps and shifts over the subjects with the nervous energy of a caged tiger, yet his camera's relationship with the film's luckless protagonists is a complex one. At various points, the camera takes on the point of view of the character, a striking difference from the observation style that marked much of his work. In one scene, we see a long shot -- seemingly unconnected with the rest of the narrative -- of the camera whizzing along the scooter-filled streets of Taipei. Inexplicably, the shot is seen through a green filter. A half-hour later, the viewer learns that Flathead has a penchant for wearing tinted sunglasses. At the same time, the camera mocks its characters. As Kao and Flathead argue and scheme, speeding to one place or another, the camera pointedly steps away from the characters and lingers on Taiwan's lush landscape in a manner that recalls the later works of Kenji Mizoguchi. An impressionistic critique on modern society and a bold stylistic change for one of world's greatest directors, Goodbye South Goodbye is an elegant, masterful work. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
Cast
Jack Kao - Kao
Hsu Kuei-ying - Ying
Lim Giong - Flathead
Annie Shizuka Inoh - Pretzel
Credit
Wang Che-cheng - Art Director, Chiu Yun-ru - Costume Designer, Kuo Kuo - Costume Designer, Hong Che-yu - First Assistant Director, Hou Hsiao-Hsien - Director, Liao Ching-song - Editor, Yang Teng-Kuei - Executive Producer, Chang Hua-fu - Line Producer, Lim Giong - Songwriter, Chen Hwai-en - Camera Operator, Hwang Wern-ying - Production Designer, Kazuyoshi Okuyama - Producer, Ben Hsieh - Producer, Huang Chong - Producer, Katsuhiro Mizuno - Producer, King Jieh-wen - Producer, Shozo Ichiyama - Producer, Du Du-che - Sound/Sound Designer, Jack Kao - Screenwriter, King Jieh-wen - Screenwriter, Chu Tien-wen - Screenwriter
