Goodbye South, Goodbye (Film)

1996. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien.



Context:
A tale of modern Taiwan: The 'south' of the title refers to Taiwan, defined and labelled as the south in relation to some colonial other, China or Japan, but now independent on its own. Yet the characters of this film still seem somewhat lost, meandering aimlessly. This connects with what Hou has described as Taiwan's struggle to assumes its new status as independent and affluent nation-state. Even though all characters in this film wish to leave Taiwan or think about it at some point, in the end none of them can go ahead with it as they are still too tied to their homeland, stuck there with this impossible desire to leave 'the south'.

Connection to previous Hou films: the film GSG most closely connects back to is The Boys from Fengkuei, in its depiction of the languorous lazy days of a group of petty hoodlums wasting the time away.

Shochiku co-production: for the second time, Hou worked with Japanese producer Shozo Ichiyama, then of Shochiku studio.

"Without affectation, without visible effort, he transforms a staple of pulp fiction—the gangster trying to go straight—into a melancholy meditation on time, place, subjectivity, and Taiwan."

"One of his more languorous movies, Goodbye South, Goodbye is almost too successful in conveying the stagnated, going-nowhere lives of layabouts. Like all Hou movies, Goodbye South, Goodbye is uninflected and detached, demands active engagement, perhaps more so than most of his other films. (It’s probably the most uneventful movie about gangsters ever.) Like all of Hou’s works, it is also rich, lustrous, profound, and affecting."

"There are shots of car rides through crowded city streets, idylls on lush country roads, trains snaking into the mountains. These moments are invariably gorgeous, graceful, swoony—they’re as beautiful as anything Hou has committed to film. The most transfixing is a motorcycle jaunt in the countryside, a lovely, wending tour through rural, overgrown Taiwan."

"Throughout Goodbye South, Goodbye are unexpected cuts to strange angles and puzzling perspectives. In one, there is a close up of snowglobe, with a man’s tattoos in the blurry background beyond it. In another, the camera tracks into a restaurant dining room, except everything is in an orange tint and the soundtrack is silent. Each time, Hou pulls back, revealing that those images were seen through someone’s eyes—in the former, Gao’s girlfriend dawdling in bed, in the latter, Flat Head dishing out orders while wearing orange sunglasses and a walkman."