Edinburgh Napier University

  According to the conventional (Western) model, the typical first act is split into two distinct sections, each with distinct functions. The first (1.1) functions primarily to establish a protagonist and to interrupt their life with an inciting incident. The second (1.2) functions to move the protagonist from the shock of the interruption to the decision to pursue an active goal, culminating with a turning point. Alternative first act approaches exist, however, which create correspondingly different viewing experiences. In Goodbye South, Goodbye (1997), Hou Hsiao-Hsien presents a first act notably different to the conventional model, and in doing so finds the narrative time and space to focus less on how pressurised plot events and active criminality
impact upon his characters, and more to explore the ways his characters interact within their crime milieu.

Hou’s style is ‘contemplative, elliptical’, defined by ‘an ability to transform the small events and gestures of everyday life into resonant images with lasting emotional power’ (Vick, 2008: 201). Goodbye South, Goodbye demonstrates his predilection for the resonance of the everyday: far more than plot, Hou focuses on the way his characters speak to each other, care for each other, eat together, within the world of low-level criminality in which they reside. Their criminality is background—foregrounded, instead, is a meditation on place, the tonalities of the Taipei shanty, and their manner of surprisingly intimate, familial togetherness.

This audio-visual essay examines similar approaches in Hou’s other works, including Daughter of the Nile (1988) and The Assassin (2015), as well as comparable approaches in Western films by Robert Bresson, Jean-Pierre Melville and Jim Jarmusch.