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Three Times
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 22 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 20 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Drama | Foreign | Romance
Written by:
T'ien-wen Chu
Hsiao-hsien Hou
Directed by: Hsiao-hsien Hou
Release Date:
Theatrical: April 26, 2006
DVD: September 26, 2006
Running Time: 120 minutes, Color
Origin: Taiwan
Summary
RATING: Not Rated
Starring Chen Chang, Qi Shu, Mei Di, Su-jen Liao, and Fang Mei
Hou Hsiao-hsien delivers one of the most rapturously beautiful and romantic movies of the year. Told as three love stories, each set in a different era -- a 1966 pool hall, a 1911 brothel and present day Taipei. The film stars the same actors in all three sections -- Shu Qi and Chang Chen. (IFC Films)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Café Lumière Millennium Mambo
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database Official Studio Site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
TV Guide Ken Fox
It's simply one of the most beautiful films he's (Hou Hsiao Hsien) made to date.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Three Times is great cinema, pop romance that carries a special charge.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum
Three Times, one of the peaks of his (Hou Hsiao-hsien) career, may be your last chance to see his work inside a movie theater.
Read Full Review >Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Three varieties of love: unfulfilled, mercenary, meaningless. All photographed with such visual beauty that watching the movie is like holding your breath so the butterfly won’t stir.
Read Full Review >Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker
The style is pure Hou: richly textured atmosphere, tiptoeing camerawork and long, languorous takes of scenes full of privileged moments of human activity.
Read Full Review >LA Weekly Scott Foundas
I urge you to see the ineffably beautiful Three Times however you can, lest you go on thinking that Hou's greatness is merely the supposition of obscurantist critics intent on reserving their highest praise for those films that nobody else can actually see.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Kevin Thomas
Finds Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien at his most intimate and romantic. The deceptive simplicity of these vignettes, written by Chu Tien-wen, throws into relief Hou's formidable storytelling strengths and visual acuity - his way with actors, his subtlety and expressiveness.
Read Full Review >Miami Herald Marta Barber
Politics in Three Times is as subtle as the stories being told. The film is probably too slow, too silent and too long for most audiences. But look beyond the quietness, and you'll discover a three-gem jewel.
Read Full Review >Boston Globe Wesley Morris
Another triumph of modesty from a master who deserves real, paying audiences, not just the adoration of besotted film critics.
Read Full Review >Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek
In these three potent miniatures, Hou Hsiao-hsien suggests that time passes differently when you're deeply in love. He captures the mystical quality of that time on film, making us feel as if we're living in it, rather than simply watching it.
Read Full Review >The New York Times Manohla Dargis
Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's hypnotically beautiful cinematic trilogy Three Times doesn't just illuminate faces and objects; it seems to fill them up, as if they were lighted from within.
Read Full Review >New York Post V.A. Musetto
Anchored by the performance of Shu Qi, who has come a long way from her days as a nudie pin-up. She's a first-rate actress.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Scott Tobias
A sampler of novella-length films set in three different time periods and starring the same two actors, Hou Hsiao-hsien's Three Times resembles one of those delicate trios served at fine restaurants, each a fresh interpretation of a common ingredient.
Read Full Review >New York Daily News Jami Bernard
A lyrical, subtle, chaste and nearly wordless romance.
Read Full Review >Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman
Do Hou's films deserve to be seen? Absolutely, if only to end the myth that they're too perfect for this world.
Read Full Review >Village Voice J. Hoberman
My first impression of Three Times was that it was high middling Hou--conceptually bold but unevenly executed. The movie's implicit themes of time travel, eternal recurrence, and the transmigration of souls seemed as muddied by the director's devotion to Shu as they were dissipated in the confusion of the final present-day section. But Three Times improves on a second viewing.
Read Full Review >Variety Jay Weissberg
Less accessible than recent "Cafe Lumiere," picture will appeal strongly to fans.
Read Full Review >ReelViews James Berardinelli
Features minimal dialogue. It is mostly about mood and images, and it moves at a glacial pace.
Read Full Review >The Hollywood Reporter Richard James Havis
Three Times offers a careful examination of the changing ways people have reacted to each other during the past 100 years. As such, it's an interesting essay but certainly a minor work from a master.
Read Full Review >The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann
The film's trouble is in what happens in each section: not enough. Once the atmosphere of each period is established, the story is too weak to interest--and the characterizations are too thin to compensate.
Read Full Review >Washington Post Stephen Hunter
The first section of Three Times is fabulous; the second is fascinating if remote; and the third a jangly, modernist mess.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 5.8 (out of 10) based on 20 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Lin L gave it a1:
Rereading the critics' comments that initially led me to view this movie, I'm stunned. Though I watch a lot of foreign films and have a high tolerance for subtitles, subtext, and symbolic weirdness, I have to say this is the most boring film I've ever seen. A few nice visuals don't come close to making up for the clueless characters, scant dialogue, and the fact that virtually nothing happens in any of the vignettes. I've never felt such disconnect from the critics, including some of my favorites!
jane T gave it a0:
In the 20 years that they've played at festivals, with almost no distribution in the U.S., the films of Taiwan's Hou Hsiao-hsien have evolved from a cult into a conspiracy: Here are movies, say the Hou faithful, so refined and subtle and poetic that the Man won't even let you see them. Three Times is the second Hou film to receive an American release, and as you watch its trio of linked stories, which feature the same two actors (Shu Qi and Chang Chen) romantically entangled in different periods and settings, you can see why his fans revere him — and also hear why his sensibility is pitched too high even for art-house ears. The first story, ''A Time for Love,'' is by far the best. Set in 1966, it features Chang as a soldier who haunts a billiards parlor, where his courtship of one of the pool-hall girls — Shu, as a sultry stalk of a temptress — blossoms with a modicum of words and gestures. This is a love story in which the chemistry is all there is, and Hou stages it with delicate nostalgia, using the tinkly pop melancholy of Aphrodite's Child's 1968 single ''Rain and Tears'' to express how love finds its essence in the fear of loss. If every Hou film were this touching, perhaps he wouldn't be world cinema's greatest footnote. Yet Three Times is a diminishing achievement: ''A Time for Freedom,'' a pseudo-silent set in a brothel in 1911, echoes Hou's more fascinating (and corrosive) Flowers of Shanghai (1998), and ''A Time for Youth'' replays the rudderless lost-generation dithering of Millennium Mambo (2001). Do Hou's films deserve to be seen? Absolutely, if only to end the myth that they're too perfect for this world.
Henry V. gave it a9:
An ambitious and practically transcendent piece of filmmaking. It's rare that a director has the intelligence to capture history so poetically, and it's flat out audacious for one to envision a future that is so bleak and hopeless.
Bob A. gave it a4:
A mess of a film. It would be correct to say that the theme is: love manifests itself differently through time. But most films prefer to explore their theme. This one is content to state it and be done. People looking for entertainment will be bored to death. People looking for thoughtfulness won't find much new here except for self-conscious, even gimmicky art.
Josh C gave it a4:
One of the most overrated filmmakers working anywhere in the last 25 years. This is yet another of his banal films. The first section is great,and heartfelt, the second is boring, and the third is a muddled mess that plays like outtakes from another bad Hou movie "Mambo". This film demonstrates why Hou is cinemas greatest footnote. He makes cold and pasionless films for smug critics and nobody else.
Marc K. gave it a3:
There are only two nice things I can say about this movie: 1. This film might have been a huge hit in China, but it doesn't translate well for American audiences. 2. Shu Qi is the most beautiful woman in the world.
J V gave it a10:
Three Times (actually, I think the Chinese title is The Best of Times) is an outstanding work of art! Hsiao-hsien Hou has created a symphony in three movements that speaks to the depth of his intellect as a writer and director. The magnificent artistic skill of the camera lens, the profound simplicity of the images caste in three radically different histories, and the captivating recursive complexity of the story place work in the rarefied realm of great cinema. If you know film and have not seen Three Times, a gem awaits you.
