Sightlines · reception
How What Time Is It There? was received
2001 · Tsai Ming-liang · What Time Is It There? on Sightlines
The arc
Premiered in competition at Cannes in 2001 to strong reviews and landed high on critics' year-end polls; a quarter-century on it's settled in as one of Tsai Ming-liang's two or three most beloved films and a foundational text of what people now call slow cinema.
What’s debated
The eternal Tsai debate: is the near-wordless, long-take stillness hypnotic and profound, or is this the film you point to when arguing 'nothing happens' arthouse has gone too far?
Its footprint
It's the great cinephile bridge film — Taipei linked to Paris, Taiwanese New Cinema linked to the French New Wave — and its clock imagery and Truffaut love make it a favorite reference point in essays and Letterboxd reviews about grief, loneliness and movie-love itself.
Where it stands
A slow-cinema canon staple and the usual gateway recommendation for anyone starting on Tsai Ming-liang.
Did you know? Jean-Pierre Léaud — the child star of The 400 Blows — appears as himself in a Paris cameo, and Tsai loved working with him enough to build a whole later film, Face (2009), around him.
Named by the director
- The 400 Blows (1959) — Tsai openly built the film as a tribute to it — Truffaut's film appears on screen and shapes the Paris thread.
- François Truffaut — Tsai has repeatedly cited his love of Truffaut, conceiving the film as an homage and casting Truffaut's alter ego Léaud.