Love and Squalor: Rebels of the Neon God

Rebels of the Neon God (1993?) is the just-released in US first film from Tsai Ming-Liang - and should definitely be of interest to those who, like me, were blown away by his most recent film, Stray Dogs. While SD is much more daring in its cinematography - virtually the entire movie consisting of long single takes from a fixed point - Rebels is a pretty astonishing break-out movie and shares the same topography as Stray Dogs. It's a place none of us would want to live or even visit so fair warning this filmis not for everyone: Ming-Liang is interested in the underside of the Asian prosperity, and both movies focus on the outsiders, squatters, petty criminals (at least in Rebels), toughs, and thugs on the margins of Taipei life. Rebels tells of a few days in the life of two teenage petty thieves (who get in a little over their heads when they rip off a video-game parlor), another very lost and disturbed teenage boy whose hatred for his gruff taxi-driver dad eats him alive, and a pretty young woman who works in a roller-rink and hooks up with the boys for no clear reason - we have to believe she's deeply troubled or addicted, though we don't see direct evidence for this in the film (one of its few flaws). As with SD, the scenes create a disturbing picture of the squalor and tawdriness of city life: many scenes of noisy video parlors - the gleaming neon of the title, and the incessant pings of the sound track; a squatter's apartment revolting in its decrepitude, and many night-time rides on the ever-present motorbikes along the crowded neon-lit streets of Formosa, construction going on everywhere - just looks like a city you'd never want to visit, the polar opposite of the many cinematic romances of NYC, Paris, and Rome.