I really loved this movie. Many people didn't and I really understand why : it's a very slow movie. Everything takes time, everything is long and you don't really see where the director really wants to go. He follows this girl. She appears to us at the beginning at the film, walking in a very long corridor, in a slow motion and on pop music. As this girl is impersonated by Shu Qi, she is absolutely beautiful. This girl smokes, she seems a little bit sad and you don't really know what is her story. The voice of a girl tells you about the relationships this girl had in the past and this voice says that, when she speaks, it's in 2010 (ten years later after when the action takes place). You never really understand why this voice says that. You never really understand what this girl wants and what is her past (although you have some informations during the film), you just see her live and it's absolutely fascinating and hypnotic. It's hard to say but you see how much Hou Hsia Hsien is fascinated by beauty, time and modern life. His fascination for time is also present in "Three Times". In this movie, everything is normal, nothing is spectacular and incredible (about the plot, the sets or whatever) but everything is poetic, mysterious and hypnotic. It's the kind of feeling you have when you see someone and you don't know why, but this person fascinates you. It's the same kind of feeling. It's fascinating as when you see someone's life and just let this person free to do what she wants, you just look at this person. It's a very good movie although fascination is something very personal.

Apparently, the major critics were not willing. Hou Hsiao-hsien is no longer the Flavor of the Month, if the reception given to *Millennium Mambo* is any guide. Hou may no longer be trendy, but his latest film remains a masterpiece -- just another notch on the Master's belt. The critics castigated Hou for wasting our collective time with a movie about a party girl; simultaneously, they praised the juvenile *Kill Bill* to the skies. The critic for the New York Times essentially declared that the artistry in the movie wasn't worth it. The critic was "bored" by the artistry.Meanwhile, those of us who are NOT bored by Hou's artistry may enjoy a feast of it in this edgy, profoundly sad movie. It's set in Taipei in 2001, though the narrating heroine "Vicky" (a gorgeous Shu Qi) speaks to us from 10 years in the "future". The film was actually MADE in 2001, though it didn't reach American shores until earlier this year: hence, an unintended poignancy arises from the fact that we, too, are looking at the film's events from the future -- a jaded, rancorous, post-September 11 future. We feel as despairing as the narrating Vicky sounds, and observe the decadent nightlife depicted here with the same sense of disbelief: were we really that hopeful, were we really that careless, when the new millennium was ushered in? In the first scene, she's walking -- almost dancing, really -- down a long concrete promenade under pale florescent lights, while the wall-to-wall techno music starts thumping ever louder. It's a moment of incandescent happiness in a movie that has few such moments.For the unpleasant details soon assert themselves: she's getting spacey on drugs in a nightclub, returning home to a live-in boyfriend who is abusive, on drugs himself, and erratically but dangerously jealous. One scene, at once nasty and blackly humorous, shows the boyfriend literally sniffing for evidence of adultery on Vicky. The girl occasionally rebels at these indignities and leaves the jerk, but, "as if hypnotized", she always returns whenever he finds her and begs her to come back to him (and he ALWAYS finds her). Hou instinctively understands the self-destructive persona, and he meticulously illustrates Vicky's addictions, whether to cigarettes, booze, "excitement", or degrading sexual relationships. The narration gives us a crucial clue, as well: we learn that this boyfriend of hers convinced her to blow off her final high school exam years back, which basically made her a drop-out and started her on a path toward a wasted life. Hou also understands WHY we're self-destructive; he understands that failure is so much easier.Occasionally, we get a break from the woozy-headed, nauseous neon underworld of Taipei and find ourselves in a snow-covered fantasyland on the Hokkaido island of Japan. Here, while frolicking in a winter wonderland with a casual Japanese boyfriend and his brother, Vicky reverts, with much relief, to childhood. There's a poignant moment when she leaves an imprint of her face in a mound of snow. The camera lingers lovingly on the image of the barely visible imprint -- it's as convenient a symbol as any for the barely visible life of a pretty party girl without talents or prospects, the type of girl one usually sees only fleetingly in movies about more melodramatic subjects like gangsters (and, yes, this movie is about gangsters, too). She's the hanger-on, the pretty ornament on the arm of the criminal. Well, leave it to Hou Hsiao-hsien, the world's greatest working director, to dare to assert that the Vickys of the world not only have a story to tell, but that their stories can be as bleak and nihilistic -- and as artfully rendered -- as any of your King Lears. It goes without saying that the Hou's camera placement is utterly and simply without peer. If anything, *Millennium Mambo* marks an advance in his technique: he takes a little more control, here, and is not quite so blandly omniscient as he can sometimes be. It's hard to write about technicalities, but Hou somehow has managed to find the perfect balance between a focused POV and his more usual reliance on oblique reference points. His cameraman, Mark Lee Ping-Bing (of *In the Mood for Love* fame), gloriously realizes Hou's vision with incredible color: smeary and throbbing neon in Taipei, ethereal and misty white in Japan. Finally, Hou has also convinced me that techno and "Deep House" music can actually approximate art . . . as long as this type of music is paired with, well, a movie by Hou Hsiao-hsien. (See his *Goodbye South, Goodbye* for more evidence.)*Millennium Mambo* is a must-see for the cineaste. 9 stars out of 10.

This film is made in the slow style recalling some of the naturalistic elements of the new wave, or all the many moviemakers who have tried to copy suchfilmmaking. The film is the story of a rather vapid, not very bright girl who shacks up with her high school boyfriend, an utter loser with no life. She then gets involved with some very low level criminals some of whom seem to be ratherdecent sorts. Then, it's over. Films like this always seem to be searching, trying to find something to compel our interest. This movie fails totally. Some of the scenes feel improvised and the actors do O.K., but this is an uninteresting film about the uninteresting. So how did this get made? Well, star Shi Qi is truely a stunning beauty who seems like she could act at least a bit if ever given something to play. Beyond that, we have an artistic fraud here of the first order.

To my surprise this movie hasn't been reviewed, and from what I gather from other external reviews either they think its empty and boring, or believe that Hou Hsiao-Hsien has gone wrong. Neither is true.Hou has matured his style over the years, and instead of staying with the same historic movies he has moved to the present where he is needed the most. Finally we can see a depiction of the youth's life, which is common to the rest of the modern world, and we see the influence of the west, the decadence of a culture, the fast extinguishing life of a young woman. All seen through an objective heart, not judging or celebrating, but offering comprehension. Very often do we see movies made by the same young people or for commercial needs, when they are more interested in suprising you or make it a music video, and even when Hou uses music a lot he doesn't subordinate his camera or story to it.Maybe it hasn't had a proper release, but anyone with a chance to see it shouldn't miss it. This is a serious and difficult film, and even if you enjoy it for the first time (which is not common), you'll have to repeat the viewings to understand that the most valuable thing in the movie is Time, and Hou is a filmmaker in the true sense, a sculptor in time as Tarkovsky would had called him.