three times (hou, 2005)

Maybe what makes Hou such a tough nut for some people to crack is that everything he's doing with the cinema is right there on the surface: grooving on three kinds of nostalgia - for his own past, for a past he wasn't around for, and for a present that's slipping away (and seems to be filled with reminders of dissolution and regret). Practically all his major films have touched on one of these three nostalgias. Three Times is a luminescent primer.