Tuesday Blus: Flowers of Taipei in Hsiao-hsien’s Daughter of the Nile (1987)
Although he’s most widely regarded for a cluster of films from the late 1990s to the early 2000s, it was the 1980s which remain the most prolific period for Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-hsien, directing ten features (nearly half his filmography to date) between 1980 and 1989. Recently, there’s been a resurgence in the recuperation of his early titles, and there’s a beautiful new restoration of his ninth feature, 1987’s Daughter of the Nile, which premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival. The restoration was part of the 2016 Berlin International Film Festival, and now is finally available for the first time in the US courtesy of the Cohen Media Group.
Daughter of the Nile arrived right at the cusp of Hsiao-hsien’s major international acclaim—he would win the Golden Lion out of the 1989 Venice Film Festival for his next feature, A City of Sadness and then promptly become a regular in the Cannes competition throughout the 1990s, beginning with the lauded The Puppetmaster (1993). But Daughter is a fascinating blend of genre and familial dysfunction melodrama, weaving together the escapist fantasy of the manga (from which the film derives its name) and the plight of some resilient siblings, based in part on the personal experiences of its screenwriter Chu T’ien-web (who penned a number of Hsiao-hsien’s most celebrated works, including City of Sadness, Millennium Mambo, and Goodbye South, Goodbye).
Although it takes its inspiration from a Japanese source, Daughter is clearly an homage to the neon-lit underworld of Taipei (and is a precursor to Tsai Ming-liang’s 1992 masterpiece Rebels of the Neon God, which has been better remembered). At the same time, the moody brother Hsiao-fang (Jack Kao), who survived the abuse of his older brother only to sink into a life of crime, and introspective sister Hsiao-yang (Lin Yang) on the periphery of this metropolitan city center (she works at KFC and goes to night school while attending to her preadolescent sister) also recalls the recently restored Taipei Story (1985) from Edward Yang, which stars Hsio-hsien and also delves into troubled relationships bitten by nostalgia while a new generation is influenced by encroaching values of the West.
Disc Review:
Cohen Media Group presents Daughter of the Nile as a new 4K restoration. Picture and sound quality are well-attended in this transfer, the availability of which should automatically be a noteworthy event for devotees of Hsiao-hsien. Film scholar Richard Suchenski supplies an exhaustive audio commentary track, and Asian cinema expert Tony Rayns is on hand for an interview deliberating Daughter in the auteur’s canon.
Film Rating: ★★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
Disc Rating: ★★★½/☆☆☆☆☆
