Les jeux de l'amour et du billard

[chani]

You won't understand the pun that is the subject of this entry if you don't know Marivaux and if you haven't seen Three Times. Yes I went to the movies and saw an Asian movie (it's been  along time!). It isn't a film I'll cherish in my memory for ever but Hou Hsiao Hsien made some fine movie! It's worth seeing if only for the beautiful pictures and some neat ideas in the scenario.

That taiwanese film is divided in different times, a trick that is becoming usual in Asian films ("Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter and Spring"), but it could also call to mind classical plays even though there is no unity of time, nor of place. Yet there's some logic and some consistency going on through various connexions. First it's always the same main actors repeating the oldest history of times, between men and women. Shabadabada  Shabadabada.

The first time called "A time For Love" is set in 1966. The second, "A Time for Freedom", takes us back to 1911. Eventually we're in 2005 for the third time "A Time For Youth".

1966...it's the encounter. 2 young people fall in love. It's quiet and tender, and we are lulled into nostlagia by famous hits like " Smoke gets in your eyes" and "Rain and Tears".That first act inspired me my bad pun (les jeux de l'amour et du billard), because a billiard table is the centre of the action, and according to me, the metaphor of what's going on. We see girls working in billiard halls as hostesses (I didn't know such jobs existed!). Chen had a crush on one of those girls and wrote a love letter to her while he was away for his miltary service. But the girl moved on to another place and probably another similar job, and when he came back another girl was working in the billiard hall, May, who had found and read the letter the former girl left behind her. They play billiards together, flirting and Chen falls for May. Here's the metaphor. He couldn't get to his girl directly, just like in billiards. You have to hit on the white ball first in order to hit the right ball with the white ball. May is the right ball. He wins the game and the girl. Actually she let him win the game, and we can guess that she has a hidden agenda since she read the love letter he sent to the former hostess. He leaves again but promises to write and she writes back. But when he comes back on leave, May is no longer there and a new girl has taken her place as billiard hostess. But Chen wants May. Time has come for action. So we follow him in different taiwanese towns while he's looking for his beloved in various billiards halls, like a ball hitting several times the edge of the table before getting to its goal. Eventually he finds her. It's tensed and clumsy, like a fresh love. They don't talk a lot but eventually when their hands join in the rain, we can feel a thrill. That close-up is pretty moving. Connexion, communication is possible. It must have been love indeed. There's hope. That episode was the most beautiful. The shots were really arty. I especially liked the one in which they silently eat outside.

1911...Taiwan is under the yoke of Japan. The woman is a courtesan living in a prosperous Tea House (a brothel), and the man is her client. That episode could be a remake of "Flowers of Shanghai" from the same director, it is at least a wink to Hou Hsiao Hsien's former movie, except that they don't play Maj Jong this time and that the sequence is entirely silent! I think it was a great pied de nez because Asian movies are known for not having a lot of dialogues.  What is quite funny is that actually the characters talk A LOT during that episode but we can't hear them, and maybe they can't really hear each other either. They speak but they don't communicate. So instead of the usual movie we get simply inter titles as in old silent films and a tinkling piano in the background, except when the courtesan or her servant are singing and playing music. The songs are like a long moaning. Is there still love? One could doubt it since he's her master and she's just a flower he enjoys. He's a writer and a political activist dreaming of freedom for Taiwan (so the soldiers' apprentice became someone who wants to fight for his country!) and she's nothing but a slave, owned by a Madame (the billiard hostess became a prostitute and she still works for another female boss), who dreams of  escaping her condition and of becoming her lover's concubine. But he doesn't seem interested in HER freedom. As in 1966 there's another woman (same actress as the first billiard hostess), a courtesan who got pregnant and whose client/lover ransomed her (thanks to the writer's help), so she can leave the brothel to become a concubine. History doesn't really repeat itself here because in 1966 the girl's departure was our heroine's chance for love while it's the other way around this time. She's stuck (btw she never goes outside) and has to carry on in with her job until the new apprentice (10 years old) could replace her as an accomplished courtesan. There might be love between the woman and the man still, but the only action he's ready to take occurs in his writings. He's all talk. Hope is fading.

2005... The third segment, "A Time for Youth," shifts from an era of stately quiet and warm, yellowish light to the chaotic freeways of Taipei. Jing the woman is now an epileptic rock singer, with an almost-blind eye because of a difficult birth (maybe rather because smoke got in her eyes!). She also has a scar on her throat, representing a yen, which makes the connexion with the previous episode, along with the singing part. The man is a photographer now. The romance starts with her having an epileptic crisis on his bike then they have sex at his place. We learn that he found her through the Internet and that she wanted to sell her soul (a step beyond selling her body in 1911). He took pictures of her, stealing her image like a vampire, in a bar where she was singing before taking her to his place. It looks like a one-night stand, but they can't forget each other despite him having a girlfriend (the always-there-other-woman from 1966 and 1911, who this time got the guy before our heroine!) and her living with a woman too! She doesn't seem able to choose between her two lovers. Love is carnal but tainted by lies and deceitfulness. The lack of communication is represented through the use of computers and mobile phones. Reaching the other seems much easier than in 1966 when he had to cross the country on his bicycle or than in 1911 when she had to wait for weeks before seeing him again. But the characters are more passive than ever, they are subjected to what is happening, receiving it. It is a hopeless youth. A cold, bluish light bathes the present day, most of the scenes occur in the dark or at least in closed-in. The neon lighting that  lies on the floor at the photographer's apartment, contrasts with the oil lamp hanging on the ceiling in the 1911 episode. Even the music Jing plays is actually made by her computer.

They no longer play billiards, they are simply rolling balls.

Was love just a smoke screen? Or was love what still remains there when everything else is dissipating for that cyber generation?

They, asked me how I knew,
My true love was true,
I of course replied, something here inside,
Can not be denied.

They, said some day you'll find,
All who love are blind,
When you heart's on fire, you must realize,
Smoke gets in your eyes.

So I chaffed them, and I gaily laughed,
To think they would doubt our love,
And yet today, my love has gone away,
I am without my love.

Now laughing friends deride,
Tears I cannot hide,
So I smile and say, when a lovely flame dies,
Smoke gets in your eyes,

Smoke gets in your eyes.

Written by Jerome Kern (music) and Otto Harbach (lyrics) for the musical "Roberta" in 1933
Recording by The Platters was a # 1 hit in 1959