Good Men, Good Women

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Audience Member I liked some individual scenes but it seems you really need some context from the other parts of the trilogy or a knowledge of Taiwanese history to get much out of this. Lacking either of these I felt largely shut out and the lack of anything remotely approaching "exposition" got quite irritating after a while. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 02/13/23 Full Review Audience Member Written by Chu T'ien-wen and directed by Hou Hsiao Hsien, their arthouse opus is a structurally intricate and profoundly nuanced composition of vignettes of women suffering in love in a contemporary Taiwanese era and its forgotten historical period, helmed by a subtle performance from Annie Shizuka Inoh. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/22/23 Full Review Audience Member viewed on 17/7/04 (Sat) Hou Hsiao-hsien is the godfather of Taiwan movies. To slam his work is like talking bad about your father. His films usually mark important chapters in the history of Taiwan. He is patriotic in a very sublime way. His movies are also beautifully filmed. Every frame seems effortlessly made but the cinematography is first rate. The chameleon-like role of Annie Shizuka Inoh (aka Yi Neng Jing) is a very challenging. She plays a modern-day actress, the important political victim Chiang Bi-Yu, a bar hostess etc. She speaks Japanese, Hokkien, Mandarin fluently. She shows great depth of acting, making me admire this once-chubby act-cute singer has matured so much. All things fall in place well except the pace is so glacial that I am damn glad I did not have to struggle to stay awake in the cinemas when it was shown at the Singapore International Film Festival. I have a friend, who is crazy over Taiwanese movies, once told me that he will never spend money again on movies made by those well-known arty filmmakers. It can be so downright boring, with all respect. I agree and, with all respect too, please be considerate to your audience and stop playing the arty-farty high-minded maestro. Think Ang Lee ok? Rating: D Rated 1/5 Stars •  Rated 1 out of 5 stars 01/14/23 Full Review Audience Member I would need to watch this again to give it a better assessment. On first viewing, I found it fascinating regarding its historical ambitions but a mess structurally. There are much better Hsiao-hsien films than this. Rated 3.5/5 Stars •  Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars 01/26/23 Full Review Audience Member The democratization process in Taiwan meant a lot for the development of Hou Hsiao-hsien's movies, as they thematically became more politicized and challenged the country's official history records. Good Men Good Women is a delicate homage to victims of the White Terror of the fifties, and Hou, quite shockingly at the time, openly dares to portray socialists as idealistic heroes. With it's overlapping narratives and different time layers, Good Men Good Women also marks a sigificant stylistic change for Hou, who in the contemporary settings uses decidedly less static camera and more close-ups than usual. Hou's intentions seem somewhat muddled, but the contrasting images might be intended to highlight the discrepansies between the times, the insecurity of the future and the legacy of past injustices. A great watch in any case. Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/29/23 Full Review Audience Member (***): [img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/user/icons/icon14.gif[/img] Well-acted and directed. Rated 4/5 Stars •  Rated 4 out of 5 stars 01/18/23 Full Review Read all reviews

Good Men, Good Women

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