Taipei Story

Ultimately, "Taipei Story" is bleak yet exhilarating.

It may not be the complete masterpiece that it has sometimes been hailed as-only a terrifically accomplished and affecting film that is one of many possible entry points into the work of a great filmmaker.

Yang's film centers on the slow disintegration of a relationship, an erosion that mirrors the abrading effects of both tradition and modernization.

A mournful odyssey of one couple's promising future slowly eroded in the changing landscape of China's consumer culture.

What resonates most from the movie is [Edward] Yang's empathy for his doomed characters.

There's a lilting sense of dread, rhythmic but never fully musical, that permeates Taipei Story and infects the people and objects that populate the frame.