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Three Times (Zui hao de shi guang) (12A)
- Consumer Advice: Contains moderate sex references
- Run time: 2 hours 15 mins
- Language: Mandarin
- Genre: Drama
- Release date: 4th August 2006
- Starring: Qi Shu, Chen Chang, Mei Di
- Directed by: Hou Hsiao-Hsien
- Distributor: Artificial Eye
Plot Synopsis
Shu Qi, in tight, lime-green satin trousers, cleans up the pool hall and impulsively pots a couple of balls; on the soundtrack, The Platters are singing 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes'... Three Times is Hou Hsiao-Hsien's most seductive film in some while, full of small, magical moments which capture fleeting pleasures and transient emotions. Each of the film's chapters - all three starring Shu Qi and Chang Chen - is set in a different year. The pool hall turns up in 1966, and it's easy to figure out that this represents an episode from Hou's own adolescence: Chang Chen is a kid on his military service, chasing Shu Qi from one pool hall to the next. In 1911 (the year of China's first revolution) she's a tea-house courtesan worrying about her prospects of marriage and he's her regular customer, an activist who visits Taiwan between fund-raising trips to Japan and dangerous forays into China and scarcely notices her needs. And in 2005 she's a bisexual rock chick (actually a singer who keeps having epileptic episodes) and he's a photographer; both are involved with other people when they begin their dangerous liaison. Love changes, Hou suggests, and love stays the same.