FESTIVAL ’90 : Screenings Present Pacific Rim Cultures

City of Sadness

Taiwan Today, 8 p.m., Laemmle Grande, 349 S. Figueroa St.; Monday, 8 p.m., Melnitz Theater, UCLA

The first Taiwanese film ever to take a major festival award--Grand Prize at the Venice Film Festival--Hou Hsiao-hsien’s “City of Sadness,” is remarkable in many other ways. It has the density of a good novel, compressing years of frenzied social history, from the end of World War II to the end of the mainland Chinese revolution, into the experiences of one family. That family, touched by the local underworld, slides dizzily to disaster; meanwhile, their country careens through one social convulsion after another. The movie keeps a calm, ironic view, even during the most horrendous events: the street fights, disorder, repression and the escalating series of vendettas that drive the story’s events. Hou’s brilliant staging of fight scenes--which explode seemingly out of nowhere and then surge right and left past the frame’s edge--is utterly distinctive and unnervingly realistic. His eye for significant detail is unerring, his images restrained and lovely--and he is capable of suggesting deep, painful emotions without ever tumbling over into bathos. “City of Sadness,” a masterpiece, is so packed with life, incident and rich detail, it can barely be assimilated on a single viewing.