Hou Hsiao-Hsien: Daughter of the Nile (1987)

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Ni luo he nyu er (Daughter of the Nile) made by Hou Hsiao-Hsien in 1987

I made today a crazy experience: two movies watched in a row. A classic of Naruse from 1954 (Lost Chrysanthemums), followed by a movie of one of the most modern (or post-modern, if you like) directors, Hou with Daughter of the Nile. But I was eager to see movies made in the 80's by the Taiwanese master: I haven't seen any of them so far, only read about, so I couldn't resist the temptation.

Hou is an extremely difficult director, and each movie of him claims several days after watching it to be fully tasted, and this is because the plot is just a support for the atmosphere, and what the movie has to say is there, dissolved in the atmosphere; and so, several days are needed for you to taste slowly the atmosphere of what you watched, to get the meaning.

That is why each of Hou's movies has so many long takes: because it's atmosphere what he is interested in.

It seems to me that this Daughter of the Nile is not one of the most difficult of Hou's movies; but this could be an impression due to the fact that I have already watched Millennium Mambo, made in 2001, a film exploring the same universe.

Anyway, Daughter of the Nile offers for a connoisseur the opportunity to see a very young Jack Kao (Flowers of Shanghai, Goodbye, South, Goodbye, Millennium Mambo), as well as Li Tian-Lu, the patriarch of the puppet art in Taiwan (here he plays a sympathetic grandpa; Hou would made for him a great movie, The Puppetmaster, in 1993).




(Hou Hsiao-Hsien)