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Maybe it’s missing the point to wonder why Hou Hsiao-Hsien can’t pay as much attention to the solid premise he sets up as he does to the beautiful images he creates. That premise—set in the 9th century Tang Dynasty era in China—focuses on a trained killer named Yinniang (Shu Qi) who fails in an assignment, and is subsequently sent by her master to kill Tian Ji’an (Chen Chang), the man to whom she was once betrothed. That potentially charged dynamic between assassin and target is almost entirely ignored by Hou, whose narrative instead wanders through plenty of convoluted political machinations seasoned with a couple of magical spells. There are also a few sequences of semi-wuxia martial arts action, which get almost all of their energy from the locations in which Hou sets them, like a towering forest of apens. From the conversations shot through filmy drapes glowing with blobs of candlelight to treks through tall golden grass, dozens of individual shots are breathtaking in their composition. And it still would have been lovely to have more genuine emotion to pull it all together.
Official Site: wellgousa.com/theatrical/the-assassin
Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien
Cast: Shu Qi, Chang Chen, Satoshi Tsumabuki and Sheu Fang-yi
Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien
Cast: Shu Qi, Chang Chen, Satoshi Tsumabuki and Sheu Fang-yi
