The Cinematheque

“The most memorable fusion of song, dance, and weather since Singin’ in the Rain.”

Dennis Lim, The Village Voice

In Tsai Ming-liang’s end-of-the-millennium musical, none of the actors sing. Instead, the past, in the form of recordings by Hong Kong idol Grace Chang, sings for them. The film’s scenario, which concerns a Kafkaesque epidemic, two isolated tenants, and an apartment building seemingly on the verge of collapse, suggests a future foreclosed were it not for these incantatory interruptions of the past. Lee Kang-sheng’s floor happens to be Yang Kuei-mei’s ceiling; an area of unrepaired damage—amidst a nightmarish December deluge—reveals this fact with such economy it could have fallen out of a silent melodrama like Paul Fejos’s Lonesome. Cinematic spectres would increasingly appear in Tsai’s films, but in The Hole the Taiwanese New Wave director first landed upon dance as a way to crystallize his choreography of actors. Surrounded by flooding and decay, Lee and Yang’s movements morph between routine and panic—when Chang’s music erupts, time and space are transformed.

In Mandarin with English subtitles

“Transcendent … The major innovation of The Hole is its inclusion of musical numbers, each performed with gusto amidst ghostly corridors and crumbling structural facades.”

Lawrence Garcia, In Review Online

“A sci-fi film set in the dreary present, a romantic-comedy about two people that never meet, an Antonioni-esque look at urban squalor, and a jukebox musical, Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole is as protean as it is potent.”

Joshua Bogotin, Screen Slate