• Hsiao-Hsien Hou’s patient, lyrical realism is in full effect in Goodbye South, Goodbye– the story of a couple of small time criminals in Taipei.
  • There are two shots before the titles- one of a man talking on his cell phone on a train, and another of the train tracks. HHH’s tool bag includes the use of a very long average shot length.
  • Goodbye South, Goodbye just observes- hanging out in medium or medium-long shot with Flatty and Pretzel. They gamble, they complains about the staleness of mainland tea. HHH’s camera pans and hovers—he never dramatizes, moralizes or judges.
  • In comparison with his best work (A Time to Live, a Time to Die, Café Lumiere, Flowers of Shanghai) HHH just has too many non-descript mise-en-scene arrangements here in Goodbye South, Goodbye.
  • The setting (far more appropriate word than “story) is what the film is about. HHH examines these men living on the fray as they discuss debts, opening restaurants, and get rich quick schemes (one involving pigs).
  • There are a pair of distinctly inspired sequences- one driving through the city with a green filter (above)- later a red—simulating the look through tinted sunglasses.

HHH is one of the great modern masters of film form- and part of that repeated concoction in Goodbye South, Goodbye is driving (in cards, trains or on bikes) in long takes, silent, with characters listening to music. These are not particularly beautiful, but one must admire the dedication to the formal pattern.

  • HHH does break form (and character) by switching to a handheld camera like a Dardenne film—it is quite jarring (and a mistake) as the camera pushes through the doors catching some live music.
  • The greatest shot in the film (and one that could be right out of A Time to Live, a Time to Die) is the scene of Flatty and his father as they get into an altercation. The altercation spills outside and they are framed by the door with green paint on the walls. The grandfather is there for it all in the foreground right. Like A Time to Live, a Time to Die–  this film is about disenfranchised youths. They disappoint the prior generation because of the pull and lure of the big city (and the fall that comes with it).
  • The karaoke bar setting has a group gathered towards the end of the film—characters are eating in half the scenes (same with Flowers of Shanghai)- reality, observational. This specific shot is an eight minute long take.
  • Recommend but not in the top 10 of 1996