[Tsai Ming-liang: Ranked]
Unlike the desolate, depopulated Taipei featured in most of Tsai Ming-liang’s remarkable oeuvre, Rebels of the Neon God (Qingshaonian Nezha), the Malaysian-born Taiwanese master’s first full-length feature, introduces us to a bustling, neon-lit, more volatile metropolis one tends to encounter in the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang. But there is no mistaking the fact that it is Tsai’s work, in which his key, interconnected motifs of communication, sexual frustration, spiritual malaise, and modern urban alienation play out within the confines of exquisitely composed images, where every movement is designed to excavate the sorrow hidden beneath the surface.
Even if this film is slightly more conventional in its storyline than Tsai’s other features, it deserves to…