My girlfriend is always complaining that I rent gory, hateful Italian horror movies like 'Strip Naked For Your Killer' and 'Cannibal Holocaust', so I figured I'd switch it up and introduce her to the wild world of Hou. I should have stuck with 'Strip Naked...'! She complained the entire time that the film was too slow, that the characters were too vague and the whole thing, well, 'sucked'.
In my opinion, this was a graceful, magnificent film, but it is, what I like to call a 'Phantom Masterpiece' that is, a film which culminates a director's many obsessions, but doesn't really have that special punch that makes masterwork status unequivocal. I felt 'In the Mood For Love' by Wong Kar-Wai was a similar disappointment when compared to his 'true' masterpieces 'Happy Together', 'Chungking Express' and 'Fallen Angels'.
So, while you're right to expect a lot from this movie, don't expect a 'Flowers of Shanghai'.
Regardless, I found this film very fascinating, and one viewer's comment on IMDb about the film as a meta film is interesting, especially when you consider that framing shots of different actors in different times and places are virtually identical sequence to sequence. For instance, when a woman opens a letter, she's shot from exactly the same vantage point every time, regardless of the origins of the letter or herself. Its just too idiosyncratic to not be meaningful.
Also, a lot of this film is playfully back lit as characters are reduced almost to shadows for much of the action, however, as they move through the frame, light finds them and its really quite incredible.
If you are a true film fan, or a fan or Ozu, Haneke, Bresson, or Antonioni, you'll love this.
