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Malaysian born, Taiwan-based writer-director Tsai Ming-Liang's (REBELS OF THE NEON GOD) third feature is a languorously paced, darkly absurdist tale of a troubled Taipei family. One afternoon, Xiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) visits a movie set, and is drafted by the director (Ann Hui) to play a corpse floating in the grimy Tamsui River. Afterwards, the young man is plagued by excruciating chronic neck pain. Xiao-Kang searches for a cure while his parents lead their distinct lives--his mother (Lu Hsiao-ling), a bored restaurant worker, has a dissatisfying affair with a pornographic video salesman (Lu Shiao-Lin), while his gruff father (Tien Miao), leads a secret homosexual life of cruising and assignations in saunas. Each family member inhabits a separate sphere within their cheap, prefab apartment, where they pass wordlessly like strangers. As Xiao-Kang fruitlessly battles his blight from the poisonous river, his father struggles to keep water from flooding through the spare room's ceiling. Meanwhile, the familial relationships further disintegrate, mirroring the deterioration of Xiao-Kang's body and the apartment's infrastructure. Aided by his talented stock company of actors, Tsai uses a masterful procession of mundane yet metaphor-rich images and a stillness rarely broken by dialogue to illustrate the family's inexorable drift towards one quietly horrifying moment.

THE RIVER was screened in June 2001 at Walter Reade Theater in New York City as part of Urban Ghosts and Legends: The Cinema of Tsai Ming-Liang organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.