The first song of the film, Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by The Platters, plays over colourful billiard balls rolling, colliding and falling on a green table. Thus begins the first story set in 1966, A Time for Love. Shu Qi plays Ah-Mei, a pool hall hostess. Chang Chen is a young man with dashed hopes who slowly, after a few cigarettes, a few ferry crossings and a few innocent letters, falls in love with Ah-Mei, only to chase after her in a string of sultry pool halls across Taiwan.

The second story, A Time for Freedom, is set in 1911, after the first Chinese revolution. In a cute and cunning fashion, this entire segment is a silent film, complete with intertitles and accompanying music. Shu Qi is a courtesan while Chang Chen is a political activist and a frequent customer. Freedom is what they lack: they are constrained by society and more importantly, by their own inability to express emotional truths.

Jumping to the present in A Time for Youth, Hou paints a picture of the post-modern romantic relationship. Chang Chen is a photographer while Shu Qi is a bisexual-epileptic-poet-emo-rock-chick. They are both in other relationships when they meet. Our first introduction to the pair is Shu Qi riding on the back of Chang's motorcycle. She is crying convulsively but her sobs are muffled by a cacophony of traffic. Set in a bluish glow of mostly neon or fluorescent light, these two lovers are the most passionate, substituting words for kisses and caresses.

Hou has often been compared to Japanese master Yasijuro Ozu, with his subdued style and complex characters. In Three Times, Hou like Ozu uses the spaces in which the characters inhabit as extensions of themselves: the pool halls, the tea-house brothel, the city of Taipei. Hou is also a champion of mixed lighting, where indoor lighting is yellow in hue, sunlight is blue and fluorescence has a touch of green. A big no-no for most Hollywood films, Hou's use of this colourful palette accentuates the sensual quality of the film and complexity of the characters.

The focus of this film, love, is probably the most contested and confusing concept in the human language. Hou argues that it is not merely a word, an idea, an emotion, but rather it is space and time. In summation, would like to quote Céline from Before Sunrise: "if there is any kind of god, it wouldn't be in any of us, not you, or me, but just... this little space in between." Therefore, in the end, Three Times is a film about physics.

Three Times plays at the Vancouver Film Centre:
Mar 17-23
Fri: 4pm, 9:15pm; Sat: 4pm, 7pm; Sun: 1;30pm, 4pm, 9:30pm; Mon: 4pm, 7pm; Tues: 4pm, 9pm; Wed: 4pm, 7pm; Thurs: 4pm, 9:15pm