Millennium Mambo

Shu Qi (The Assassin) portrays Vicky, an aimless bar hostess caught between a possessive boyfriend (Duan Chun-hao) and a sensitive gangster (Jack Kao), in this stylish, seductive submersion into the techno-scored neon nightlife of Taipei directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien—named “one of the three directors most crucial to the future of cinema” in a worldwide poll conducted by the New York Film Festival in 1998. Looking back from the then near-future of 2011, Vicky envisions her life of 10 years earlier rendered in a transfixing, narcotic haze of techno, slo-mo, and iridescent imagery, along with an inescapable undercurrent of ennui. The atmospheric score is provided by Taiwanese actor and musician Lim Giong, a Hou Hsiao-hsien regular.