I fully admit the longueurs where nothing happens for minutes in this film are trying. But for those of us who have spent too much of their lives in near-empty revival/foreign/indie theaters late at night, Goodbye, Dragon Inn DOES, by the end, resonate and make an impression. The empty arthouse theater is -- or maybe was, as so many are disappearing -- the one place a single person could be in the city and rarely, if ever, feel lonely. Even a walk in the park risks watching happy parents with their adorable kids. But in these theaters, you could be truly alone and happily protected; if the couple in front of you necking bothers you, you can move. It is an exquisite aloneness, completely absorbed by the work of Kurosawa or Rohmer, or some unheard-of director from eastern Romania. And this movie, at times, captures that feeling beautifully. But I had one big problem. In my hundreds of late nights in near-empty theaters, primarily those in New York and San Francisco, I never once was hit on by another man. Maybe it's because I wasn't looking for it, or just didn't give off that vibe; but I never saw any inkling of that activity. And so much of the film, with men spending forever standing side-by-the-side at the urinal and approaching each other as close as possible without touching, seemed mistaken. Of course, things may have been different in Taiwan, and movie theaters were the one place where gay men could meet freely. In big US cities, there simply may be too many other venues to accomplish that objective. But at least for me, these quasi-gay sequences subtracted significantly from the beauty of the film, not because I was offended, but because they seemed misplaced. Nevertheless, if slow, slow, SLOW sequences don't give you a problem, give it a try.
Review of Goodbye, Dragon Inn
