Good Men, Good Women (1995) Hao nan hao nu (original title)

Director:

Hsiao-hsien Hou

Writers:

Bi-Yu Chiang (novel)
T'ien-wen Chu
(more)

Release Date:

9 December 1995 (Japan)

Genre:

Drama | History | Romance

Plot:

Intended as the concluding film in the trilogy on the modern history of Taiwan began with Beiqing Chengshi (1989)...

Plot Keywords:

Film Within A Film | Flashback | Based On Novel

Awards:

11 wins & 2 nominations

Cast

Annie Shizuka Inoh	...	Liang Ching / Chiang Bi-Yu
Giong Lim	...	Chung Hao-Tung
Jack Kao	...	Ah Wei
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jieh-Wen King	...	Ah Hsi
Bo-Chow Lan	...	Hsiao Dao-Ying
Li-Chin Lu	...	Mrs. Hsiao
Chen-Nan Tsai	...	Ah Nan
Vicky Wei	...	Liang Ching's Sister

Directed by
Hsiao-hsien Hou

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Bi-Yu Chiang		novel
T'ien-wen Chu
Bo-Chow Lan		novel

Produced by
Shozo Ichiyama	....	producer
Katsuhiro Mizuno	....	producer
Kazuyoshi Okuyama	....	executive producer
Yang Teng-Kuel	....	executive producer

Original Music by
Chen Hwai-en
Hsiao-Wen Jiang

Cinematography by
Huai-en Chen

Film Editing by
Ching-Song Liao

Production Design by
Ho Hsien-Ko
Wen-Ying Huang
Ming-Ching Lu

Costume Design by
Wen-Ying Huang
Li-Chin Lu
Juan Pelyun

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Chih-yu Hung	....	assistant director

Sound Department
Du-Che Tu	....	sound

Other crew
Joyce M. Pierpoline	....	press attache: Cannes

Production Companies

• 3H Films
• Chang Su Productions (in association with)
• Fujian Film Studio (in association with)
• Painted Face Communication (in association with)
• Shôchiku Eiga
• Team Okuyama

Other Companies

• Malin Post  subtitle

Also Known As:

"Hao nan hao nu" - Japan (original title)

Runtime:

108 min

Country:

Japan | Taiwan

Language:

Mandarin | Cantonese | Japanese

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Certification:

Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Guangdong, China

Company:

3H Films

Movie Connections:

Features Late Spring (1949)

One of Hou's greatest achievements

Encouraged by American foreign policy, the Kuomintang government in Taiwan in the 1950s began a policy of repression of real or suspected communists who were rounded up by the military police, detained, and often shot. This event, known as the White Terror, was suppressed in Taiwan, along with the 2-28-47 massacres, without any public discussion for forty years. Only the trees were witnesses and the story could not be told until martial law was lifted in 1987, yet even now remains clouded with hints of undisclosed crimes. Hou Hsiao-hsien's 1995 film Good Men, Good Women dramatizes the Taiwanese people's fear and reluctance to deal with their past, showing the effects of Taiwan's forgotten history on the destiny of an actress in present-day Taiwan. Dedicated to all the political victims of the 1950s, the film uses the device of a "film within a film" to tell the story of real-life activists Chiang Bi-Yu (also played by Inoh) and her husband Hao-Tung (Giong Lim) who fought in China against the Japanese during World War II but were arrested as Communists when they came home.

Good Men, Good Women takes place in three different time sequences: the contemporary world of actress Liang Ching (Annie Shizuka Inoh), her recollection of her recent past as a drug-addicted barmaid, and the world of a yet to be made film about resistance fighters in the 1940s. Hou suggests a contrast between the sterile, corrupt lives of the present generation and the young people of the past who acted with a social conscience. While it is a complex and elliptical film, it is one of Hou's greatest, filled with tenderness and sensuality and an aching melancholy for a world whose promise has remained unfulfilled.

The film opens with a parade of young people dressed as peasants who march toward the camera singing a joyous song: "When yesterday's sadness is about to die. When tomorrow's good cheer is marching towards us. Then people say, don't cry. So why don't we sing." The camera then cuts to present day Taipei where an unidentified caller telephones Liang Chang but refuses to speak. The caller has stolen her diaries, and faxes her the pages daily prompting her to recall her tragic relationship with Ah Wei (Jack Kao), a gangster who died in a shootout. The film intersperses scenes of intimacy between the two lovers with the world of the 1940s where Chiang Bi-Yu and Hao-Tung, have left Taiwan for the Chinese mainland to support the anti-Japanese resistance. The "film within a film" shows how Chiang and Hao are forced to put their children in foster care and Liang identifies with Chiang, drawing parallels from her own experience of having to give up the things she loved the most.

Hou shows that events buried in a nation's past can have far reaching consequences and that history may be indistinguishable from personal memory. Yet the film is not one of ideas but of images and Hou has provided some memorable ones; for example, when Liang sits before a mirror putting on her makeup as Ah Wei sits closely beside her talking about the possibility of her being pregnant. It is a mundane event, yet Hou imparts it with a mysterious and timeless quality. In many ways, Good Men, Good Women is typical of Hou's films with its static camera, long takes, and rhythms of everyday life, yet it is also his most political, a searing indictment of the squandering of a nation's heritage, allowing us to see that a country, like its people, cannot redeem its future until it tells the truth about its past.