Tsai Ming-Liang offers viewers in "The River" an honest chance to take it or leave it right from the first sequence. If you make it through and enjoy (or rather, are puzzled by) this first sequence - a film shooting in a river, depicted in a long, almost real-time pace - you will for sure be caught in his stream, because what follows is simply great, original, surprising, offbeat, funny, alarming and often mind-boggling.
Tsai is a Taiwan filmmaker whose cinematic grammar apparently owes a lot to Westerners - especially to Europeans. You can spot Truffaut in his love for his characters, in the way he always casts his favorite actor Lee kang-Sheng much in the way Truffaut did with Jean-Pierre Léaud, and in the mysterious and surprising ways love expresses itself in his films.
You can feel the influence of Antonioni in the long sequences without dialogue or music, in the urban chaos leading to lack of communication between the characters, in the forces of nature (the heavy constant rain, the omnipresence of water in this case) responding to "civilization's" abuse - the echologic chaos.
You can feel a touch of the Godard of "Le Mépris" in the total lack of communication between very close people (the couple in Godard, the family here) and the kind of non-conform sexuality of the Pasolini of "Teorema" (sexual repression and catharsis among the family members, in both cases).
But Tsai has got something all his own. I've seen now all his feature films and it's very impressive to see how he has developed a language of his own, through his imagery, his pace, his actors' performances, his conflicts, his endings. He is sure to always include unforgettable sequences (here, for sure, the sequence in the sauna between father and son) that will haunt you, delight you, disgust you, move you and stay with you long after you've left the theatre. That's a rare accomplishment in any visual arts these days.
For me, "The River" is surely Tsai's masterpiece to date, a film that flows slowly, harmoniously, hauntingly, effortlessly to its destination, catches you in its stream, and leads you to a free-meaning ending - which, in this case, is something warmly welcome.
