TIAN CHIAO BU JIEN LE (PROGRAMM: IN STRANGE PLACES)

Small-scale, refined urban story that balances between fiction and documentary. Tsai Ming-liang demonstrates on just what minimal means he can manage. The film looks like an exercise in casualness. An exercise in narrating as if there is no narration. The (candid) camera follows a woman who wants to cross a busy road. Another woman, with a heavy suitcase, is trying to do the same thing. Before the two have reached the other side, this subtle fictional element seems to have been entirely assimilated into a documentary observation. In the end, the fiction re-emerges from the documentary urban river.