Narrated by herself 10 years into the future, “Millennium Mambo” chronicles a short but ambiguous period of time in the life of Vicky, a beautiful and purposeless twenty-something living in the heart of Taipei at the dawn of the new millennium. She is regularly the victim of a relentless cycle of destruction and abuse with her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Hao-Hao, a failed DJ with whom she shares an apartment. While making ends meet as a nightclub hostess, she meets Jack, a professionally seedy but emotionally warm businessman who takes her under his wing. Far from her home in Keelung, she searches for meaning in the short-term ecstasy of the Taipei rave scene, drifting through life in a seemingly interchangeable series of drug-fuelled, beat-pounding vignettes.
“Millennium Mambo” is a movie that tells two stories. The first is the story of one woman’s drawn-out escape from an abusive relationship. The second is told thematically, and is a story about time, youth, identity, reflection, and distance. Hsiao-Hsien handles both stories with clear intention and masterful execution, but it’s his establishing of core themes in the ‘second’ story where his direction really shines. Moreover, it’s his use of Vicky, who is by all definitions the centrepiece of this movie, as the conduit of these themes that makes for such effective storytelling. This refers to both her past and present-day selves. As narrator, present-day Vicky refers to her past self exclusively in the third person, as if she’s watching a stranger’s memory unfold in front of her, essentially becoming her own voyeur.
Behind the camera, Hsiao-Hsien and his cinematographer, Mark Lee Ping-bing, give Vicky the same distance afforded to her by the narrator, using it to flesh out her alienation with the world around her, as well as her disassociation with herself. Scenes play out from inside tight, claustrophobic doorways or under the frenetic, artificial neon-tint of the nightclub. In one of the most inspired shots of the movie, we see Vicky and an almost completely obscured Hao-Hao have sex behind a foggy stained-glass window, focusing solely on Vicky’s writhing, discomforting submissiveness.
The camera operates under a stillness that’s to be expected of Hsiao-Hsien, sprawling slowly, if moving at all, preferring to calmly contemplate Vicky herself, instead of frantically cutting between multiple characters. Conversely, Vicky’s happiest and most free-spirited moments are transitional, whether she’s skipping through tunnels or taking in the glory of Taipei’s metropolis from the sunroof of Jack’s car.
As Vicky, Shu Qi carries the disillusionment of a generation – and yes, in retrospect, generations – with herculean strength, and true nuance and understanding of her times. Due to Hsiao-Hsien’s quite exclusive concentration on Vicky, much of Qi’s performance hinges on effectively translating body language to the audience during the quiet and reactionary moments between the words and between the action. It’s no easy feat to accomplish without either over or underacting, but her control here is perfect. Qi communicates subtle emotions like numbness, irritation, and exhaustion with such measured restraint that when the time comes for more passionate emotion to rise to the surface and spill into the scene, it feels inevitable, and earned.
A thematic re-occurrence in the movie is the almost paradoxical coupling of time passing with the emotional stasis of Vicky (a feeling many young graduates and otherwise will no doubt find ache-inducingly familiar). So, it makes sense for the film’s now iconic soundtrack to follow suit in that regard. The Lim Giong score blends sound that should be on opposite ends of the sonic spectrum, but makes them feel like they belong together. The opening track, “A Pure Person”, is as transitional as our protagonist wants to be, morphing from sparse static pulses into a soft guitar melody overlayed with Giong’s airy, meditative vocals. At once haunting and nostalgic, chaotic and calming, industrial and organic, Giong masterfully creates harmony between two worlds of sound.
Hao Hsiao-Hsien’s “Millennium Mambo” is a patient and understated masterpiece that almost 20 years later feels as timely as the day it was released, evoking bittersweet nostalgia for a fleeting, sometimes scarring time of reckless freedom.
