So this is a movie directed by Edward Yang, whom you will remember from such movies as Yi Yi and A Brighter Summer Day. I pretty much loved both of those, but this is an earlier movie of his. The way that usually goes is that you end up like “ah, you can see the seeds here of his mature style, but this is definitely an early work,” and… yeah, pretty much. But the caveat on that is that his mature work is really excellent so this still ends up being very good.

A common thread that runs through Yang’s work (well, at least the three movies that I’ve seen) is that he’s exploring the rapid changes in Taiwanese society while also telling a story about the people living in the midst of this changed world.

And so this is fundamentally a story about a relationship where two people (Chin and Lung) are drifting apart and kind of inchoately discontented with the shape of what they have, but also unclear about what they really want. The movie mirrors their relationship woes through other characters — a former buddy of Lung’s whose wife gambles away all their money; a coworker of Chin’s whose marriage is falling apart and clearly wants to have an affair with her; his ex-wife; her parents — in a way that feels like it’s giving seemingly every side character a richly developed interior life.

But these stories are all taking place in a city where the pace of change leads everyone to feel perched on the edge of disaster at all times. We see this almost immediately when Chin’s company is bought out and she loses her job; but you can also see it in how her parents are struggling to get by, in how Lung gives seemingly everyone he encounters some money to help them out, and then suffers sharp reversals himself.

It’s a good movie that does a lot well; but all the side relationship mirroring stuff is kind of a two-edged sword — while it adds depth and nuance and what-not, it also makes it a little unclear what the focus of the movie is. I like to go into movies knowing literally nothing about them, and usually that works pretty well; but here, I feel like I would have benefited from a “PS this movie is primarily about this couple, the other characters are not as important,” to put some structure around what I was seeing, rather than having to organize it mentally afterward. Visually, while it’s not as strikingly composed as Yang’s later movies, it’s still an interestingly-shot film (that does a particularly notable job using night scenes to good effect, especially near the end). Recommended, but if you haven’t seen his later stuff, watch that first.