What Time is it There?

Director: Tsai Ming-liang

2001 / 116min / 35mm

Lee Kang-sheng’s Hsiao Kang, now working as a street vendor selling watches out of a briefcase in Taipei, sells a dual-time watch to Chen Shiang-chyi, a young woman preparing for an extended stay in Paris. While she drifts alone through the City of Lights, Lee, back home, develops a new fascination with all things French, seeking out a bootleg VHS of Truffaut’s The 400 Blows—whose star, Jean-Pierre Léaud, appears in a memorable cameo—and going to often unusual lengths to set every clock he sees to Paris time. A mordantly funny film on the topics of grief, longing, female flâneurism, death, and rebirth, featuring some of Tsai’s most exquisitely composed durational sequence shots.

Print courtesy of the UCLA FIlm & Television Archive.