a film which clearly defines how arthouse films can often be poor films that are up their own arses, and only succeed because a parade pseudo intellectuals fall over themselves to stomach very poor films better than the next pseudo intellectual. dont watch this film unless someone has offered you eternal life to waste. or you can happily stair at bad rothkos for many hours each.

Negatives in this film :

Turgidity, does anything actually happen is this film, things almost happen but not really
The story is effectively non existent.
Lack of dialog of any sort ” maybe 3 lines said in the entire film
immensely drawn out shots of a clubfoot woman plodding about a rotting taiwanese cinema, which seems to be a hangout for queers ?
and worse its not even realistically observant / documentarial ? time spent pissing in urinals was longer than any three men would realistically urinate for, so obviously massive gay toilet scene with cottaging overtones here.
maybe the cinema was closing because ordinary people don’t go to cinemas that have effectively become gay clubs ?
nothing is made clear or explicit in any way, its a … “you work it out for yourself scenario”, with no meat in the sandwich to consume.
but as classically true with most bad arthouse films, there isnt any substance and that which might be found by the insane, is a deperate overactive projection of their own bored mentaility to try and find something interesting in said film.
there are lots of things hinted at, unrequited romance between the club foot ticket sales girl and the projectionist.
intimations of queers active within the cinema endlessly prowling and rubbing up against each other in tight passages, yet no actual apparent resolution.

This film was so dull, that even as a hetero sexual man I was willing it to come to fruition on its threat of a gay sex scene or something, anything just for something to be happening on screen other than water seeping through concrete.

positives :

nice cinematography although it would need a 1080p treatment for me to get properly absorbed by the rotting concrete scenery, lots of lovely rain throughout this film, I have a fetish for rain in films.
the effective meaning of the film, the cinema is haunted by people, its the the people that are the ghosts, theyre not dead but theyre still haunting the place …
that ordinary life is not hollywood, that romances are often flat limp, half started and die, and that real life, is often like being stuck in the squalid concrete lobby of existence waiting for life to end or to happen but really living in a kind of limbo.
and the end of the film/cinema itself, bieng really the outcome for the actors of this dull peice who must now no longer haunt the stage of its existence / life … endless metaphors here etc but anyway
regardless of the postives theyres something inexcusable here, which is noone could develop any empathy for the characters one way or another, they are just flats that have been placed in the scene to prevent the lingering agony of the slow locked of shots from appearing to be what they in fact are, which is empty, theyres nothing going on in this film, its a flat rothko, the film would effectively be better of being a fly on the wall documentary of a real taiwanese cinema than an actual film.

at some moments you almost wish you were watching the film on the cinema screen in the film rather than this film itself regardless of how kung fu toy like it appears, you can tell the director wanted to project a personal experience of chinese cinema going in some dilapidated industrial regional backwater, which sort of works the problem is their must be more action in such a populated country ? than this, it seems tortuously empty.

And no doubt some arty farty twit is going to say its all a very clever statement about artisitic suppression in taiwan ? or something, rather than a recognising the plain fact thats its quite a poor film.
way to much vain 40’s hollywoodesque lighting up of cigarettes in exchange for actual dialog, which really isn’t a fair exchange.