Flowers of Shanghai (1998)

Two masters, one island. Hou Hsiao-hsien brings melancholy landscapes and the weight of history — A City of Sadness, Flowers of Shanghai, The Assassin. Tsai Ming-liang floods apartments, silences characters, and turns Taipei into a haunted aquarium — Rebels of the Neon God, Goodbye Dragon Inn, Stray Dogs. Between them they basically invented a new grammar of cinema. Slow, patient, devastating. Pull up a chair. This might take a while.