Hole, The
Entry updated 23 April 2025. Tagged: Film.
Taiwanese film (1998; original title Dòng; cut vt Last Dance). Directed by Tsai Ming-Liang. Produced by Cheng Su-ming, Chiu Shun-Ching and Jiang Feng-Chyt. Written by Tsai and Yang Pi-Ying. Cast includes Lee Kang-sheng and Yang Kuei-mei. 95 minutes (cut TV version 69 mins). Colour.
At the turn of the millennium in Taiwan, a mysterious epidemic (see Medicine; Pandemic) seemingly spread by cockroaches causes people to crawl on the floor and seek dark places to hide. It is also permanently raining. The authorities attempt to evacuate, but a handful of people choose to stay behind. Among them are an unnamed man (Lee) and the unnamed woman (Yang) who lives in the apartment below him. A plumber leaves a hole in the floor of his apartment, through which water drips, and enabling them to hear each other, which causes friction between them. He runs a food store with virtually no customers and is mainly concerned with the fate of his Cat; she hoards toilet paper and is having phone Sex with the plumber. She also fantasizes herself as a singer in the vein of Hong Kong star Grace Chang, in a number of song and dance sequences. Eventually she contracts the disease and hides among the stacks of toilet paper in her room. Upon emerging he reaches through the ceiling to offer her water and then pull her up to his room. A final musical number shows them dancing together.
Tsai is one of the most prominent of the filmmakers who made Taiwan a major centre for innovative Cinema from the 1980s onwards. The Hole displays all his signature concerns – urban loneliness, rain and floods oppressing and trapping people, a general malaise here signified by the epidemic – and his use of beautifully composed long takes, minimal dialogue and outwardly inexpressive acting that nevertheless conveys considerable emotion. Though this is one of the dankest and most claustrophobic portrayals of millennial unease imaginable; escape is suggested through the unexpected musical numbers, and one of Tsai's few optimistic depictions of heterosexual relationships. [CWa]
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