La Rivière

No doctor or healer can succeed in easing his suffering. His father, who secretly frequents the city's gay saunas, sees his room flooded by a leak that he cannot prevent. Father and son will then find themselves confronted with their most closely-guarded secrets… 

"It must be said that Tsai Ming-Liang is really a great scenographer. He succeeds in stamping each of his long continuous takes with an internal movement, a pulsation that is entirely his own; with very simple but often dazzling compositional choices (two escalators passing each other, a shower shield that conceals a body that a mirror partly reveals, corridors and doors), he succeeds in giving each of his shots a maximal plastic expressiveness." 

Jean-Marc Lalanne, Cahiers du cinéma n°516, September 1997 

Tsai Ming-Liang, The River. Taiwan, 1997, 115 min, DCP, colour, original version with French subtitles 
With Lee Kang-Sheng, Tien Miao, Lu Yi-Ching  

Berlinale 1997 – Grand Jury Prize 

Preceded by: 

Tsai Ming-Liang, Moonlight on the River. Taiwan, 2003, 8 min, video, colour, original version with French subtitles 

Shot on the Tamshui river in Taipei with two dogs, Moonlight on the River is a nod to an earlier feature film by Tsai Ming-Liang, The River (1997). It is dedicated to Simon Field, a film critic and close friend of the Taiwanese filmmaker since they first met at the Rotterdam International Film Festival.