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The title refers to the comic-book lass who time-travels to the land of pharaohs, the heroine seeking escape in the real world must make do with dancing to "Walk Like an Egyptian." She (Lin Yang) anchors the tiny Taipei household as best she can, mom is dead and dad turns up occasionally to smack her older brother (Jack Kao) upside the head for drifting into delinquency. (The girl's narration points to his end as a would-be burglar, still she appreciates the Walkman he brings her.) Fast-food work, night school, a beach visit where the camera pans across juveniles huddled around a bonfire to immerse the image in ember. "Life always forces us to keep moving forward," youth's persistent lament and Hou Hsiao-hsien's luminous pulse. The recurring composition is a deep-focus view of the protagonist's home—vertical frames within horizontal frames with illuminated aquarium on the side and screen door in the back, a desk for the sister's studies and a barely visible kitchen. When Grandpa (Li Tien-lu) drops by to ask for lucky numbers and grouse about a strict daughter-in-law, people pop in and out to ask for a share of his lottery winnings in a characteristically expressive and funny choreography of figures in space. Underworld vendettas with the hothead friend (Fan Yang), gun blasts are just another sudden flash in the neon sprawl. "Our little gang is splitting up." Mencius on the blackboard, Colonel Sanders on a glowing sign and the Marlboro cowboy on a restaurant wall, Ozu's fart jokes. An overheard radio report and a soupçon of slow-motion give the brother's fate. "Can the river of time stop flowing for me?" A crossroads between Hou's trilogies of memory and history, a preparatory sketch for Goodbye South, Goodbye and Millennium Mambo. With Tsui Fu-sheng, Hsin Shu-fen, Vega Tsai, Yu An-shun, and Chen Shu-fang.
--- Fernando F. Croce |