Rebels of the Neon God

“A near-masterpiece, and one of the most assured and accomplished debuts of the 1990s.”—Chicago Reader

With films such as What Time Is It There? and Goodbye, Dragon Inn, Tsai Ming-liang is one of the most distinctive and significant filmmakers in world cinema. Yet his auspicious first film was never released in the US—until now. In this stark-but-sympathetic portrait of teenage alienation in Taipei, Lee Kang-sheng (the lead in nearly all of Tsai’s films) plays a sullen youth who befriends the hoodlums who’ve vandalized his father’s cab. Although Tsai’s debut recalls the French New Wave, the early films of Wong Kar-wai, and, of course, Rebel Without a Cause, it is most significant for announcing the arrival of one of the great filmmakers of our time. (106 mins., DCP)