1-World Festival of Foreign Films
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"What Time is it There?"
2001
Directed by Tsai Ming-liang

With his distinctively quiet, deliberately paced style and moments of absurdist humor, Tsai Ming-liang explores cross-continental loneliness in one of the best-reviewed films of his career. A street vendor sells a watch to a young woman leaving for Paris. Profoundly moved by his encounter, he begins to set clocks and watches to Paris time. Meanwhile, romantic and sexual longing play into the solitary lives of the vendor, his one-time customer in France, and his mother at home in Taipei. Truffaut's classic The 400 Blows also figures into things, with Jean-Pierre Leaud making a memorable appearance. "...a rare film that actually expands and deepens in the memory when its time on screen has run out" (Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly). Mandarin, Taiwanese and French with English subtitles. Taiwan. 116 minutes.