Synopsis

Vicky is a bar hostess. She's been living with her boyfriend, quick-tempered Hao-Hao, for some time, but his manic jealousy has increasingly been getting on her nerves. He constantly checks up on her, even sniffing her when she comes home from work. Unable to take this anymore, she leaves him and moves in with Jack, a local gangster. As the world rings in a new millennium, she must decide whether to go back to Hao-Hao or make a fresh start with Jack

Curator’s Note

In ten years from 2001, Vicky calmly recalls her young and dazed self. As her own narrator, she remembers the entanglement she could not figure out with her childish and jealous lover Hao Hao, and her confidant and brother-sister relationship with Jack Kao, whom she befriended while working in a club. Busy celebrating the arrival of the millennium, people did not know what to do with the relationships left over from the past, nor do they know where they want to go with their lives. In the electronic pop music and psychedelic neon colors that emerged at the beginning of the new century, from Taipei to Yubari, Vicky's journey of finding herself seems to have just begun...

Millennium Mambo is a Cannes award-winning film and the beginning of the collaboration between Hou Hsiao-hsien and Shu Qi. (Simyun Li)

Director’s bio

Hou Hsiao-Hsien is a retired Mainland Chinese-born Taiwanese film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a leading figure in world cinema and Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement. He won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1989 for his film A City of Sadness (1989), and the Best Director award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2015 for The Assassin (2015). Other highly regarded works of his include The Puppetmaster (1993) and Flowers of Shanghai (1998)

Director’s Note

Festival & Awards

2021:

38th Golden Horse Awards

- Best Cinematography (Pin Bing Lee)

- Best Original Score (Lim Giong)

- Best Sound Effects (Tu Duu-Chih)

Cannes Film Festival

- PRIX DU JURY À UN TECHNICIEN (Tu Duu-Chih for sound design)

- Palme d'Or(nomination)

Toronto International Film Festival

2002: International Film Festival Rotterdam

Casts

Shu Qi, Jack Kao, Chun-Hao Tuan

Credits

Screenplay: Chu Tien-wen

Producers: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Eric Heumann

Audio engineer：Duu-Chih Tu

Cinematography：Ping-Bin Mark Li

Music：Yoshihiro Hanno

Music：Lim Giong

Editing：Ching-Song Liao

Production： 3H Productions Limited, Paradis Films

Production Design：Hwarng Wern-Ying