THE HOLE
dir. Tsai Ming-liang
TW, 95′
Taipei, 1999. Most of the city has been evacuated due to a global pandemic. Scientists still don’t know where the infection started, but they’re calling it the “Taiwan Virus” and its symptoms the “Taiwan Flu”. In a rundown, mostly abandoned apartment building, the depressed drunkard “the Man from Upstairs” and “the Woman from Downstairs” remain in their apartments defying evacuation. Even the plumber has gone without finishing the job, leaving a large hole in the floor between their apartments. The man doesn’t mind the hole; in fact, he uses it to watch his downstairs neighbour, a woman who is hoarding toilet paper. This deadpan quarantine sci-fi musical The Hole, in which the past is given a voice in the form of Grace Chang’s 1950s songs, is a story about the longing for closeness in the daily anxiety of isolation. The film won the FIPRESCI Award at Cannes in 1998.
