Last dance

New Internationalist, August, 1999

directed by Tsai Ming-Liang

(distributed by Celluloid Dreams, Paris and Oasis Pictures, Canada).

In the traditional Astaire and Rogers or Garland and Rooney musical, characters sing and dance to communicate emotions that they can't express in the ordinary world. The everyday of the musical depicts characters caught in drab, socially confined roles. But during the song-and-dance sequences anything is possible. Inhibitions begone! Euphoria takes over. Last Dance takes this premise to extremes.

Veteran director Ming-Liang paints life in a dystopia of rain, crumbling apartments, and a disease-ridden city. The characters are so incapable of communication they're nearly mute. The film resonates more with Kafka than Gene Kelly, more Asimov than Astaire. Garbage pickup will be cancelled. Water will be cut off. It's seven days before the end of the millennium. A virus carried by water pollution spreads through the city, turning its victims toward roach-like behaviour, crawling into corners and holes, afraid of the light. The Government has declared that residents must leave the virus areas, but provides no alternative housing. Police fumigators appear without warning; setting off their huge smoke and chemical hoses.

Last Dance follows in the tradition of future fiction, where science is impotent and the State faceless and ineffective. It's a grim view of the world. Ming-Liang is not shy of clarifying. `I have no optimistic thoughts about the future,' he says. `If you live in Taiwan, you naturally feel pessimistic. We have paid a heavy price for the take-off of Taiwan's economy over the past ten years.' These may be the words of an alienated and world-weary intellectual not shared by progressive groups fighting for change on the island. But the film does carry a small spark of hope, a little consolation for his viewers.

A young man lives in a small, very sparse flat. A woman his age lives directly below. They know nothing of each other until a plumber accidentally knocks a hole in the man's floor. Later, while the couple are away at work the hole takes on a life of its own, and starts to grow. Now he can see light below and hear the woman moving around. She can peer up into his flat as well, and she begins to dream about him.

Her fantasies are extraordinary, all in pink with plenty of sunlight streaming through. Not only that, she sings and dances with a robust crew of male dancers and sexy chorus girls. As the singers and dancers cavort in the stairwells and elevators, with brooms and fire extinguishers as props, the music that washes over them is pure 1950s Asian pop. Is she just normally boy-crazy or has she gone delirious with the virus?

Some viewers may have trouble with all this. The constant rain, peeling wallpaper, mould, and damp are quite tangible. Others might find the sogginess, the vomit and the characters' inability to eat without slurping unpleasant. The froth of the musical interludes may not provide enough consolation. And yet, the symbol of the hole is an effective device. The director's obvious skill and obsessive single-mindedness create a fiction that's creepy and memorable.

Politics ***

Entertainment ***

Reviewers: Louise Gray, George Fisher, Peter Steven, Vanessa Baird.

Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird