Vive L’Amour

A vacant luxury apartment in Taipei becomes the unlikely meeting point for three strangers drifting through the modern city alone: a real-estate agent, a street vendor and a lonely man (Tsai regular Lee Kang-sheng) who has secretly claimed the apartment as his own. They move around one another in near silence, colliding through chance, sex and private rituals of longing. Winner of the 1994 Venice Golden Lion, Tsai’s breakthrough feature announced a major new cinematic voice, already displaying the subtle humour, erotic charge and sense of urban despair characteristic of his work. Sexy, sly and quietly devastating, Vive L’Amour is one of the key works of the Taiwanese New Wave, now beautifully restored.