The River

Xiao-kang (played by Lee Kang-sheng, the regular leading actor in Tsai's films) shares an apartment with his parents in Taipei. The three of them each lead separate lives. The mother works as lift attendant in a restaurant and the retired father keeps himself busy with visits to the gay saunas in the city. Through a classmate, Xiao-kang finds himself on the set of an Ann Hui film, where he is allowed to play a floating corpse in the polluted river Tanshui as an extra. Afterwards he makes love to his classmate. Next day he has a severe pain in his neck and shoulders. Massage, acupuncture, even exorcism don't help and the pain just gets worse and worse. Meanwhile his father has another problem: there is a leak in his bedroom. He constructs a contraption of canvas and tubes to guide the water. Xiao-kang is eventually admitted to hospital. When the doctors don't know what to do either, he considers committing suicide.Tsai Ming-liang made an uncompromising and very symbolic film about non-existent family relationships and existential desperation in Taipei. The inability to communicate has seldom been portrayed more powerfully - unless it was in Tsai's previous two films. This, his third feature, won a Silver Bear in Berlin.