Rebels of the Neon God - Tsai Ming-liang

piove e se non piove c'è sempre l'acqua e un'umidità pazzesca alla quale non si sfugge.
tre ragazzi e una ragazza sono la gioventù bruciata i Taiwan e del mondo sviluppato, niente dialogo a casa, la scuola è una noiosa perdita di tempo, si trovano lavoretti precari, rubare un po' è comodo, anche prendendosi grossi rischi, l'amore non vince mai, la droga delle macchinette mangiasoldi è fortissima, insomma è un film di attualità, del 1992.
Tsai Ming-liang non dà giudizi, il film è cronaca familiare, cronaca di amori che non ci sono, piccole vendette e violenze.
Tsai Ming-liang ci fa sentire a disagio, quell'umidità si appiccica anche a noi - Ismaele

…Con una fotografia livida e piena di fascino, un'atmosfera avvolgente per il suo andamento realisticamente lento, una colonna sonora ritmica e ossessiva, e una regia che guarda alla nouvelle vague francese ma soprattutto ad Antonioni e Tarkovsky (con il quale condivide l'attrazione per l'acqua e l'umidità), TML esordisce con un film con i fiocchi e uno stile già perfetto, che in seguito "limerà" giusto un po' per renderlo ancora più sobrio ed essenziale

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…Tsai makes me care, he makes me want to see what happens to these kids, if they ever will care, what the true depth of their indifference will end up being, and so on. Tsai draws me in and I enjoy the ride, it’s all about kids keying motorcycles and jumping for joy in their underwear, and I love it.

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When a director wants to show me a group of people with aimless, directionless lives, I get a little suspicious: How do I know this isn't just a ploy to divert attention from the possibility that there's just plain nothing going on? But a good director can make a good movie about nearly anything, and Rebels of the Neon God is surprisingly haunting, attention-getting and -retaining for a movie where very little actually happens…

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…Rebels’ plot focuses most intently on the gradual, inevitable social withdrawal of Hsaio Kang (played by nonprofessional actor Lee Kang-sheng, who has appeared in each of Tsai’s subsequent features), a young slacker who still lives with his discontented parents. Seemingly friendless at the start of the film, he only recedes further into his insular world as the movie progresses. Each attempt that he makes to reach out to another, whether it’s his father, a peer, or a girl, is impeded, resulting in what feels like his nearly total emotional isolation. By the time the film has built to its chilling climax, it has presented in its main character a veritable plethora of antisocial behavior. Because Tsai does such an excellent job of examining the environment that Hsaio Kang lives in, however, his transgressions disturbingly seem less the actions of a social deviant than of a person who is responding to his surroundings in the way that his world has conditioned him to.

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…Tsai Ming-liang presents a harrowing, austere, and poignant examination of urban decay, amorality, ennui, and alienation in Rebels of the Neon God. Introducing recurring elements that would come to define the essence of Tsai's droll, minimalist, and idiosyncratic cinema,Rebels of the Neon God is a complex and metaphoric film that examines familiar Tsai themes: the ubiquitous presence of water (incessant rainstorms, the flooded kitchen floor of Ah-tze's apartment, Ah-ping's disclosed interest in Ah-kuei at a public toilet); the violative nature of the confined, shared spaces inherent in urban living (the opening shot of the telephone booth theft, Ah-tze's unexpected intrusion while Ah-kuei uses the bathroom, Hsiao-Kang's persistence in following Ah-tze), and the regression of human behavior to base instincts (Ah-tze's acts of vandalism and theft, and Hsiao-Kang's revenge). Through awkward and acutely wry scenes of prolonged and oppressive silence, odd actions, and instinctual behavior, Tsai confronts issues of identity, spiritual bankruptcy, and emotional disconnection with compassion, pathos, and humor. As a weary and distraught Ah-kuei hopelessly pleads "let's leave this place", she articulates a profound and compassionate anthem for a lost and marginalized generation foundering in the inertia of technology and modernization, complacently worshipping a hedonistic, and ultimately false, god.

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