Reseñas de la crítica

It's an exquisitely controlled movie. It's also a nakedly desperate work, in which anguish and isolation radiate from nearly every frame. I think it's best to start with this seeming contrast: intense emotion and rigorous calculation are commonly thought of as opposed to each other, and, outside of art, they usually are. . . . It's probably best to say—to speculate—that Tsai, in his theatrical feature debut, found an aesthetic to go with his feelings, and feelings to go with his aesthetic.

There is a great scene in Rebels of the Neon God when Hsiao-kang pauses in the arcade, where he has been following Ah Tze and Ah Bing, and stares at a poster of James Dean... The longing gaze that Hsiao-kang casts at James Dean suggests an echo of the ambivalent desire that Tsai's European heroes once felt for America, and the liberation that it represented.

Hitting US shores in the wake of his lauded 2013 feature Stray Dogs, Tsai's first film provides a striking glimpse back into the rambunctious, uncertain first steps of a filmmaker who would grow into one of the most demanding formalists in world cinema. Yet for all the stylistic flourishes that seem so unlike the mature Tsai, many more aspects show his innate grasp on a unique aesthetic approach to filmmaking and storytelling.

You never feel that Tsai is trying to shoehorn conventional devices into an unconventional project; it's more like he's practicing or experimenting with such focus and control that he always seems to be testing notions and propositions rather than just futzing around.

Tsai Ming-Liang's first feature, from 1992—just released in the U.S.—is a luridly lyrical vision of adolescent rage and lust in Taipei... With longing gazes, antic and violent outbursts, and exquisite coincidences set amid his fetish objects—leaky pipes and bloody wounds, fast food and bathroom fixtures—Tsai depicts the city as a spontaneous, sticky, erotic ballet.

It's primarily of interest to longtime fans, or to those who think they might become fans and want to take this opportunity to start at the beginning. If nothing else, this is a rare case in which a director's feature debut doubles as his greatest-hits album. To watch it is to simultaneously see where Tsai Ming-liang came from and precisely where he was headed.

In places, Rebels is as muted and slow-burning as you expect a Tsai film to be, but just as often, it's vibrant, nervy, altogether rock 'n' roll; one shot shows Hsiao-Kang contemplating a James Dean poster, and a terse John Carpenter-ish electronic bass line throbs throughout. The color is as vivid as the title promises: there's a striking cut from the red lights of Ah-tze's bike at night to the deep blue of a roller disco.

Rebels of the Neon God inaugurates the filmmaker's multi-movie study of urban alienation not with showoff chops but quiet, enduring compassion. Premiering here at last in a new HD restoration, and as part of a simultaneous Tsai retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image, it's a welcome reintroduction to a modern master's work.

Tsai takes instruction from a film like Touki Bouki for its engagement with dominant, fashionable film styles, but for the purpose of renouncing it. If Djibril Diop Mambéty's film sought to castigate the French bourgeoisie for its insouciant demeanor in post-colonial relations with Senegal, Tsai's film quite similarly integrates key French and American points of cinematic reference on violence and masculinity to subtly assail them.

If Tsai has always been a tired filmmaker, his aesthetic has also always been one of resistance to the social forces under which his characters toil and to the conventions of both Hollywood and high-end, internationally palatable art cinema... Rebels resists the usual satisfactions of the "youth" movie—its rebels are not rebels at all, but young people ineluctably trapped, and their efforts to transcend their contexts are inevitably circular, their rebellion made ridiculous.

The emotional high point comes with the extreme vandalism Hsiao-kang unleashes on Ah Tse's motorbike as he slashes its tires and seat and spraypaints the word "AIDS" on it. It's no act of hate but a bizarre attempt at closeness – a cry for love worthy of Sal Mineo's Plato in Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause, which Tsai's film cites.

Along with Claire Denis in France, Pedro Costa in Portugal, Carlos Reygadas in Mexico, Lucrecia Martel in Argentina, and Paul Thomas Anderson in the U.S., Tsai is one of the few living directors who still makes movies exclusively for the big screen. His scrupulous pacing, mise-en-scene and sound design require the amplitude of a theater to achieve full effect; TV viewing may also lead one to miss the small details that often tie together entire scenes.