Taiwanese filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang is one of the foremost directors of capturing the mundane. His 2003 effort Goodbye, Dragon Inn is perhaps the shining example of his abilities. However, nine years earlier he made Vive L’Amour, a fascinating example of the director’s abilities.
The film revolves around three people who, unbeknownst to each other, share an apartment in Taipei. Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng) finds a key in an apartment lock and takes it. Hsiao-kang is portrayed as aimless and morose (a spectacular scene involving an incessantly ringing phone drives this home). He soon uses the key he discovered to unlock the room, and he then slits his wrists to commit suicide.
This attempt is interrupted by a romantic encounter between beautiful real estate agent May Lin (Yang Kuei-mei) and Ah-jung (Chen Chao-jung). May leads ah-Jung to the very same room Hsiao-kang unlocked. It is then these three characters interconnect, forming a bizarre triangle of friendship that carries the story’s action.
The ordinariness of the film is almost paralyzing, as there are long shots of characters staring into space or long landscape shots that don’t necessarily add anything to the plot or action. Ming-liang depicts the nature of the human condition here, and it’s one that proves that life isn’t some cheap action movie knockoff. Sometimes, it’s just people lost in the thread of their lives, trying to make it through the day and not always succeeding. Vive L’Amour would work well for film studies professors featuring a section on Asian filmmakers or experimental films in their syllabus.