Millennium Mambo

Cause for celebration. It's not only a cracking good film, but it is the first by Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien to gain a national (though limited) release.

This extraordinary work of cinematic art is among the most sublime, compelling and beautifully crafted films to grace the big screen.

Jean-Luc Godard famously declared that all it takes to make a movie is a girl and a gun. Both turn up in Millennium Mambo, a ravishing bauble about la dolce vita in Taiwan, but frankly, the gun's an afterthought. This is a movie about the girl.

If Millennium Mambo is the only chance to see Hou Hsaio-hsien's work at a movie theater, you'd better take it.

There's wonderful promise in Hou's attempt to make a movie about the kind of woman who's usually part of the scenery.

In a sense, Millennium Mambo is a mildly prurient portrait of Shu moving, drinking, smoking, and changing clothes -- it's analogous to one of Andy Warhol's Edie Sedgwick films, but without the existential drama. Who really cares what costume this poor girl will wear to all tomorrow's parties?

A slow, empty, over-mannered snoozer that shows Taiwanese helmer Hou Hsiao-hsien asleep at the wheel.