In a word, stunning. After an eight-year absence, world cinema’s foremost aesthete, Hou Hsiao-Hsien, returns with a vengeance. Shu Qi, Director Hou’s leading lady of choice, stars as a 9th-century enforcer, taught to kill by the nun who raised her and later contracted to take out her former husband-to-be. Viewers who buy into the distributor’s promise of “a martial arts film like none made before” will no doubt be bored silly. Those familiar with the unmistakable triple-H brand will instantly recognize the director’s austere imprint and know what beauty lies ahead. Through painstaking research (and numerous takes to get it right), HHH catapults the material far beyond a series of historical maxims, leaving viewers dumbstruck by something as simple as the cut of a cloth or movement of a curtain in the breeze. There are moments when you’d swear the man knew how to harness wind to add texture to his frames. This is quite simply filmmaking at its finest. Subtitled. (2015) — Scott Marks
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