Not known for big emotional payoffs, this internationally-acclaimed, but audience polarizing filmmaker, better known for modulation than sensation, in "A Time for Love", the first of three stories from "Zui hao de shi guang", atypically gives the people what they want: a reason to cry, and an occasion to nod in recognition. This cerebral, often clinical Taiwanese director, has made the unthinkable...a crowd-pleaser; it's the closest he'll ever get to mainstream filmmaker. "A Time for Love" contains a scene every bit as iconic as the moment Lloyd Dobler(John Cusack) holds his boom-box towards Diana Court's window, as Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" dovetails with the night air like a prayer, in Cameron Crowe's "Say Anything". The genesis of the momentous instant when two hands, isolated from their star-crossed owners, find each other and clasp together like nervous magnets, begins in earnest, in a billiards room, where the same man and woman will meet three times across different generations. This is the second time; the year is 1966. At a train station, a man and woman share an umbrella; they're too late to catch a train, but right on time for love. It's raining.In "Lexus and Butters", an episode of Season 6 of Trey Parker and Matt Stone's "South Park", Cartman and the gang visit the local Hooters where Butters falls under the spell of a Hooters waitress. Failing to understand that Lexus entertains men for a living, he pursuses her, confusing the girl's professional flirting with love. Butter's plight is Chen's plight as well, in "Zui hao de shi guang", a soldier, who writes a letter to the pool girl, describing his time with her as a happy experience. In the scene, we see the aftermath of his mistake; we see the slight curl in the girl's lip before she folds the letter away. The girl leaves. May(Qi Shu) is her replacement. During a long, drawn-out scene, Chen(Chen Chang) and the pool girl shoot a game, in which the long take allows the viewer to see how chemistry works, how mutual ground can unfold into elevation. They're largely silent, but it's a comfortable silence, interjected with Chen's apprehensive incursions about this sinuous girl holding a stick. It looks like a date, but the spontaneity of actualization is dashed by a feminine arm that appears suddenly in frame under Chen, cigarette in mouth, lining up his shot, to lay down an ashtray. It's May's job to smile. He pays her. But in an earlier scene, May found the letter he wrote to the other pool girl, setting up the possibility that she takes pleasure in entertaining the soldier. She's no Lexus; he's no Butters.Like the late Johnny Cash, Chen has "been everywhere" too, man; instead of "Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Toronto...," Chen has been to Gangshen, Jiayi, Shuishang, Xinying...," looking for May. The town names may be Chinese, but the music in "A Time for Love" is conspicuously American, when it matters. The filmmaker uses The Platters' "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" and Aphrodite Child's "Rain and Tears" to convey romance, seemingly, in a way that western audiences can understand. When Cheng finds May in a Huwei pool hall, the girl reacts with such obvious delight, the audience can now differentiate May's professional smile from her genuine one. Unusual for this filmmaker, the following scene at a noodle cafe, is brief, succinct, and to-the-point: May looks at Cheng, waiting for the soldier to make the next move. The two American songs have the effect of explaining the American length of the scene, even though it carries the filmmaker's trademark of a fixed camera and no dialogue. And that next move; it's not an overture for intimacy, or even a kiss, it's the simple desire to hold a girl's hand. While "A Time for Freedom"(for people who liked "Hai Shang Hua") and "A Time for Youth(for people who could tolerate "Qian xi man po") have its strong points, "A Time for Love" is an unqualified success.

THREE TIMES (Zui hao de shi guang) is so frank a film that the viewer may get lost looking for the hidden meanings in this century traversal of lovers' interactions in China. Not one for simple linear film-making, director Hsiao-hsien Hou instead opts for mood and suggestion and leaves the paucity of dialog to make room for emotional involvement and response. Three periods - 1966 A Time for Love, 1911 A Time for Freedom, and 2005 A Time for Youth - are depicted with the same main characters, Qi Shu and Chen Chang, who prove to be exceptionally sensitive to the concept from the director: with each new tale these fine actors mold new characters and questions and yet allow us to see a line of similarity in the couples as the director has suggested.The film wisely opens with the most successful of the three 'Times' - 1966 A Time for Love - - tracing the emergence of timid passion between a lad headed for the military and a young girl who works in a pool hall. They communicate by letters after their first brief introductory encounter and circumstances interfere with the progress of their relationship in 1966 Taiwan. The middle section 1911 A Time for Freedom is gorgeous visually and conceptually the director has elected to use the cinematic form of the period (silent movie) to tell his story about the freeing of a young girl from the grip of a brothel madam and surveys the political tensions between Japan and China as the quietly lighted story of love and yearning unfolds. The film ends with 2005 A Time for Youth and here our lovers are caught up in the pollution of smog, cellphones, emails, nightclubs, and infidelities for same sex affairs that speak loudly about the tenor of the times.Hsiao-hsien Hou's films are an acquired taste and many will find the choppy editing, the fragmentary scenes that are not always well focused for the story line, and the over-long length (130 minutes) too much to endure. But the ideas are fresh and the characters and vignettes are memorable, and most of the major critics in the media have lavished praise on this film. It is an interesting work but for this viewer there are enough flaws to keep it grounded. Grady Harp

You need patience to sink yourself into Hou's rhythm. But it is not to say patience alone would enable you to understand him. You need to think, use retrospection, and savor. His film is not constructed like our modern day commercial productions that employ the conceptions so successfully implanted in your brain by the omnipresent pop culture throughout your life that when the buttons are pushed you are instantly and readily joyed, angered, saddened, or cheered.Hou's film is not built on that.The expression is not visually over-charged, nor verbally flowered, nor did he use any clichés, be it western or eastern. The screen speaks beyond itself.It could be said that most western (by "western" I mean culturally European or American in contrast with the "eastern" by which I mean the Chinese or Japanese culture) movies have their meanings put as explicitly as possible, with one of the criteria of success being that the film should say everything that could be said and with nothing left. The audience would only appreciate the things presented and ignore the ideas inexplicit. With quite an opposite of this western technique, Hou expresses himself mostly in an implicit way. The movie itself is not the ultimate product but only the more superficial side of a deeper meaning. It is like painting. In order to describe the wind, a swinging willow has to be drawn. Because the wind is invisible and cannot be captured. It is the same with the technique that works implicitly which Hou uses - he is trying to capture the culture of the society as a whole and the various individual views on love in each of the three historical phases where three love stories took place. He was trying to capture the unspeakable panoramas of the societies with the stories that were each unique to their respective historical context.Hou pieces the three stories together to mark the transition of the Taiwan history and to compare the societies and their impact on individuals. The three couples in each era were all played by Chang Chen and Shu Ki. Thus, the three stories could be seen as three hypotheses of how their love would evolve under the respective influence of each particular historical setting. The lovers are the same, but the times change. Then you could see his evaluations on each era, how he reminisces the halcyon days of the 60s, how he respects and yet condemns the protestant-like days of early 20th century, and how he doubts the present globalization and the emergence of the hybrid culture between the western (chiefly American) and the Chinese.This is simply a masterpiece. I give it a 9 only because I've seen better ones from him and his fellow Taiwanese director Edward Yang. For those of you who enjoy this film, I recommend Hou's A City of Sadness and Yang's A Brighter Summer Day. The latter, in my opinion, is the best Chinese movie ever, and arguably the best movie ever. It used the "implicit technique" to the consummation.

A triptych film about love in different time periods. The first segment takes place in 1966, the second in 1911 and the third in 2005. Like all multiple-segment movies, the segments are of varying quality. People will of course prefer different segments. The first segment is simple and sweet. A man, about to embark on military duty, meets up with a girl who works in a pool hall. He falls in love with her, and writes her after he leaves. When he returns, he searches for her desperately, and they spend a too-short evening together. It's nice, but it doesn't amount to much. The 1960s American love songs strike me as completely antithetical to everything Hou has stood for in the past. I would be surprised if someone saw this and didn't call to mind Wong Kar-Wai. To be perfectly honest, I had a damn tough time paying any attention at all to the second segment. The story works within historical, cultural and political contexts that are not always easy to understand. For some odd reason, Hou decides to convey the dialogue as if it were a silent movie. It's a strange and pointless gimmick. 1911 is a tad too early to be thinking of any well-known silent cinema. I'm guessing that China had barely seen the technology yet. Plus, the segment is filmed just as the other two are, in splendorous colors (the photography is drop-dead gorgeous throughout). I'm not big on Hou, and I'm not especially big on silent cinema, either, so the cocktail did absolutely nothing for me. Oh, and that awful upscale-hotel elevator music is just unbearable! The third segment is by far my favorite, and probably my second favorite thing Hou has ever done. Possibly even the best; I'd have to re-watch Flowers of Shanghai. It's quiet and subtle, like all of Hou's films, but, as rarely happens with me in his cinema, I actually connected with the characters and the story. I don't know if I would have liked it if it were an entire feature, but at this length it worked quite well. Oh, and Shu Qi is a babe. She was also in Millennium Mambo. Kind of wish Hou would have let her make out with that girl in that last segment. Damn you Hou Hsiao-Hsien!