The Hole

João Eça

Tsai obviously rejects emotional cinema, producing instead conceptual forms. The problem is that his ideas about reality are basic, and his films end up being the most boring and empty I've watched since Béla Tarr. The dream sequences, for instance, could have been thought by a child. What we have in this film are bodies, but cinema is about characters and not flesh. After 10 or 20 minutes, no one cares anymore.

a zul

"Those luxurious Hollywood-style Hong Kong musicals of the 1950s... glorified the peace and sweetness of life, even to the point of something like decadence... (...) I use Grace Chang's songs and the Hollywood-style song and dance scenes and costumes to draw a contrast with the reality that exists outside of those scenes." Tsai Ming-liang

Tyler Aikens

It's films like these whose popularity with the MUBI crowd forces me to reevaluate the credibility of my own taste. Not a bad movie by any stretch, but "greatest musical ever"? Say whaaaa?

petit astronaute

(35mm, but it looks like it a 16mm: can anyone verify?) I was a bit disillusioned with the film, that has a somewhat lazy narrative — I wonder if the 69 minutes long TV cut (for Arte) is not a more cohesive one. Despite the unevenness of the film, the songs are irresistible and a genuine stun, and the hole rests toujours a mistery.

Crap Monster

I wholeheartedly agree with MTeller. Something about this particular work seems so surrealistic yet clouded in realism. A Professor of mine back in undergrad put it best, in that it almost seems like Sci-Fi in its other-worldly presence.

Kamran

Sometimes unsettling or surreal, atmospherically charged, eccentric and sexual, perverse, dark yet illuminating. 84/100 - Great.

Adriano Rocha

An apocalyptic vision that scares for being so realistic, interspersed with a dreamlike vision that releases tension of the film. Excellent.

InsertOzuReferencehere

One of the best love stories ever!!!