Ming Liang Tsai's Vive L'amour remains a favorite film for this reviewer. The look is pure Tsai - slow cinema distilled to its rawest form. It’s got echoes of Antonioni’s alienated cityscapes, but with a Taiwanese twist - Taipei’s modernity feels unfinished, a promise that never delivered. The film’s beauty lies in its starkness - those long, empty shots of the apartment or the park aren’t pretty in a postcard way; they’re haunting, heavy with absence. Shadows stretch long, light falls flat, and every visual choice hammers home the isolation - Hsiao-kang under the bed, May eating and smoking alone, Ah-jung sprawled out like he’s claiming... nothing. It’s not about glamour - it’s about stripping everything bare until all that’s left is the ache. Loneliness distilled - silence rules, broken only by the hum of a city that doesn’t care and the small, sad noises of people drifting apart. There’s no score to cradle you, just drips and creaks that echo in an empty space, and dialogue so rare it feels like a trespass. After two decades and five digital editions, Film Movement came to the rescue and finally got the transfer correct. Their Blu-ray breathes new life into this Taiwanese New Wave masterpiece enhancing Tsai’s meticulous compositions. This uncensored Blu-ray is a definitive showcase of Vive L’Amour’s artistry, letting you experience Tsai’s vision of urban alienation as if it were freshly minted. For slow cinema fans - this has our highest recommendation.

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ADDITION: REMASTERED (part of Tsai Ming Liang Collection) Sony Music Entertainment (TW) - Region FREE - Blu-ray - (March 2016) - This is the same 'Sony Music Corp.' transfer as released in 2011 - same MPEG2 (which is unusual as both Rebels Of The Neon God and The River are MPEG4 AVC) - 1080P 24fps, same menus as the 2011 release, same linear PCM audio, same running time to the 1/1000th of a second - but it is sold as part of the Tsai Ming Liang Collection with Rebels Of The Neon God/ The River and Vive L'amour. The disc has a negligibly larger file-size (a few bytes) and I can't determine why but the feature is exactly the same transfer. No extras aside from a 2-minute advert on the restorations. This package had the 3 films on Blu-ray and no DVDs. It does include a wonderful picture-book with plenty of photos and, what appears to be, a film cell from each of the films.

From the Rebels and The River comparisons: "These are totally English-friendly - menus, subtitles on both feature and supplement (a 6 minute conversation with Tsai - and some clips) and the impressive book has minimal text - but also English when listing the films and some cool (what appears to be mock films cells - see photo below). Not my favorite film from the director (would REALLY have liked The Hole) but this package is recommended since we have suffered so long with ineffectual SDs. Like watching the film for the first time..."

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ADDITION: Sony Music Entertainment (TW) - Region FREE - Blu-ray - (May 2011) - This is the same 'Sony Music Corp.' that gave us the Dust in the Wind Blu-ray (reviewed HERE) of Hsiao-hsien Hou's film. While that was interlaced - this is MPEG2. So the 1080P image, on a single-layered disc, is imperfect but a significant improvement over the DVD transfers. I can't speak to colors (blue overtones) but assume they are more correct - certainly the vibrancy and detail have escalated. What is also notable is that there is a large amount of additional information in the frame - mostly on both side edges.

The case is unique (see image below) - although fans can be picky and want congruity to their blossoming Blu-ray collection as they sit on their shelves.

Audio (linear PCM) is kind of a non-event as there is hardly any dialogue in the film and no score. When words are spoken (Mandarin) they are audible but subtitles have some grammar missteps - which I forgive since I don't believe there is any important sub-text to those communications. There is no hiss or drop-outs. My Momitsu has verified it as being a region FREE disc playable on Blu-ray machines worldwide.  

Before the film we get a few words from director Chen Kuo-Fu  on the restoration (removing dirt, print damage, stabilizing the frame/color grading etc.) of these 'Taiwan New Cinema' films that have been revamped and digitally remastered by the 'new management' of the Central Pictures Corporation of Taiwan. Then there are some split-screen samples (the menu itself does this as well for Vive L'amour). This introduction into the transfer is about 2-minutes long with some eventual caveats that they cannot improve upon the source of synchronization issues. There is nothing on the Blu-ray in terms of extras.

There is a second disc - a dual-layered DVD in its own case that has the feature film and a 30-minute piece -> a subtitled 'interview' with Tsai. It has some merit as an interesting discussion on the film. Before this the same 2-minute 'intro' on restoration is shown.

Okay, despite the notable mistakes -> subtitle translations (not fatal), the MPEG2 transfer as opposed to AVC and sharing the 'interview' on the same DVD as the feature when it could have more easily fit on the Blu-ray disc - I am not deterred as I am such a big fan of the movie and this is the best way to see it outside of a retrospective (Good luck!). It was my introduction to Tsai and for many years it was in my top 10 films of all time. While I can forgive those authoring mistakes - for most the price is out-of-line. I can only recommend to those BIG fans of both the film and the director. Personally, I LOVED seeing it so improved from the DVDs. Perhaps it will come on sale one day. Let's hope. I'd endorse if it was 50% of the current price. As for now - few would consider it being worthy of the $40 US price tag.

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ON THE DVDs: I recently viewed your comparison of Tsai Ming Liang's Vive L'amour and was wondering if you noticed that Bitwin region 3 version is censored. The scene where Lee Kang-sheng enters the tub naked was edited so that we can't see his butt. Fox Lorber, even though it has inferior image quality, has a uncensored version of him entering the tub. (Thanks - Mitchell)

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Well, both DVDs leaves a bit to be desired. I didn't find excessive examples of 'combing' or 'ghosting' in the Fox but the Bitwin shows some pronounced 'combing' in horizontal pans telling us it is not progressively transferred. Both are non-anamorphic widescreen with the Fox being cropped in certain areas. The subtitles are ingrained on the Fox and removable on the Bitwin with the inclusion of English, Korean and Chinese.

In regards to the image the Bitwin is sharper with far better color separation.  On the Fox the colors can tend to bleed a bit and overall appears to be a bad Video transfer (flatline bitrate dead giveaway). Neither should be considered the definitive edition at this stage and with the director gaining popularity (and this one of his strongest films) perhaps there is hope for a better 16X9 progressive transfer in the offing. This remains one of my most watched DVDs solely for the film itself and from that standpoint we recommend the Bitwin which is the superior of the two.

NOTE: The Bitwin comes in a very cool book-style case!

Gary W. Tooze