His subject in "Three Times" is our yearning to love and be loved, and the way the world casually dismisses it... Hou Hsiao-hsien shows us people who could make each other happy and been happy themselves, and he watches them miss their chance.
- Roger Ebert
1966: A Time for Love**
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Taiwan in transition **
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Three Times starts with something simple, a boy, a girl, a promise. It feels light at first. Pool halls, music playing softly, letters being written and searched for. There’s a kind of innocence in the way they move toward each other, but also distance. Love exists, but it’s fragile, slowed down by time, by absence. It’s less about being together and more about the act of searching. Even when they finally meet, it doesn’t feel complete just a brief moment that might disappear as quickly as it came.
1911: A Time for Freedom**
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Taiwan under Japanese rule**
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This part feels the most suffocating. Everything is restrained the silence, the stillness, the way emotions are held back. The man speaks about freedom, about change, but his actions don’t follow. The woman, on the other hand, has no freedom at all. She waits, she hopes, but nothing really shifts for her. It’s a quiet kind of sadness, the kind that doesn’t explode but just stays there. Even the title feels ironic. Freedom is talked about, imagined, but never actually reached.
2005: A Time for Youth**
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Taiwan in modern times**
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Here, everything moves faster but feels emptier. The city is loud, full of light, full of movement, but the connections feel distant. Relationships happen, but they don’t seem to hold much weight. It’s like everyone is present but not really there. There’s more freedom than before, but it doesn’t lead to anything solid. If anything, it feels more isolating. The past is gone, the future isn’t clear, and everything is stuck in this restless present.
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All three stories feel connected, even without directly linking to each other. Same faces, different lives, same feeling underneath people reaching for something they can’t fully hold onto. My favourite must be the first one, the innocence is the magic of it I loved it.
Love, freedom, youth each one feels close, but never fully real.
