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The River (1997 film)

The River (河流; He liu) is a 1997 Taiwanese drama film directed by Tsai Ming-liang, his third feature, in which a young man develops a mysterious, incurable neck pain after floating as a corpse in a polluted river for a film shoot1 • 2. The film won the Jury Award (Silver Bear) and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1997 Berlin International Film Festival3.

Key factDetail
Original title河流 (He liu)4
Director and writerTsai Ming-liang, his third feature after Rebels of the Neon God (1992) and Vive l'Amour (1994)1
ProductionTaiwan, 1997; Mandarin; about 115 minutes; produced by Central Motion Picture Corporation1 • 3
Lead castLee Kang-sheng (Hsiao-Kang), Miao Tien (father), Lu Hsiao-ling (mother); Hong Kong director Ann Hui appears as herself, a film director5
Awards1997 Berlin International Film Festival: Jury Award and FIPRESCI Prize; 1997 Chicago Film Festival: Silver Hugo Jury Award3
ReleaseFrance, 27 August 1997; England, 20 March 19986
Reception75% Tomatometer (12 reviews) and 77% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes2

Spoilers

Plot

Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) shares a Taipei apartment with his parents, and the three lead entirely separate lives1. The mother (Lu Hsiao-ling) works as a lift attendant in a restaurant and has a lover; the retired father (Miao Tien) frequents the city's gay saunas1 • 3.

Through a classmate, Hsiao-Kang finds himself on the set of a film directed by Ann Hui, playing a real version of a corpse the crew has failed to fake with a mannequin: he floats face down in the polluted Tanshui River in Taipei7. He is resistant at first, knowing the water is unclean, but agrees at the director's insistence7. Riding his moped afterward, he feels a twinge in the nape of his neck that grows into severe, unexplainable pain7.

The rest of the film chronicles the treatments his parents subject him to, ancient and modern: medicinal spray, patches, an injection, massage, acupuncture, a provincial healer, and even a vibrator7. Nothing helps, and the pain worsens1. Meanwhile the father battles a leak in his bedroom, building an elaborate contraption of canvas, tubes, buckets, and towels that never contains the water7. Hsiao-Kang is eventually admitted to hospital, and when the doctors also cannot help, he considers suicide1.

The film's most discussed scene brings father and son together unknowingly in the same gay sauna, where their secrets are starkly revealed8. Film critic Adrian Martin describes the encounter as breaking one of society's most enduring taboos while registering, for viewers open to it, as one of the most tender acts shown in cinema; afterward the characters withdraw from what has been revealed and return to their solitary pain9.

Themes and style

Tsai uses his signature long, static takes to document the sensorial reality of pain in real time; one 132-second shot shows acupuncture needles being inserted into the tips of Hsiao-Kang's fingers and palm7. The film centers on a deeply disconnected family who live together but barely exchange words, sleeping in separate rooms and interacting only about their son7. Critics have read the chronic, unexplainable nature of the illness as resisting conventional causal narrative, and the father's uncontrollable leak as echoing both his hidden desires and his son's incurable affliction7.

The film is the third in Tsai's Taipei cycle and shares cast, characters, and motifs with Rebels of the Neon God and Vive l'Amour; Lu Hsiao-ling and Miao Tien play the same character's parents in both Rebels of the Neon God and this film6 • 7. The watery theme recurs across Tsai's work, from the flooded apartment in Rebels of the Neon God to The Hole (1998)6.

Production background

An origin note on IMDb states that during the production of Vive L'Amour, which immediately preceded The River, star Lee Kang-sheng dealt with chronic neck pains that inspired the film10. The screenplay is credited to Tsai Ming-liang with Tsai Yi-chun and Yang Pi-ying, with cinematography by Liao Pen-jung6. Producers were Chiu Shun-ching and Hsu Li-kong, with Chung Hu-ping as executive producer, for Central Motion Picture Corporation5 • 3.

Reception

The film won the Jury Award, one of the Silver Bears, and the FIPRESCI Prize at the 1997 Berlin International Film Festival, and a Silver Hugo Jury Award at the 1997 Chicago Film Festival3. The French magazine Cahiers du Cinéma voted it one of the ten best films of the 1990s11. On Rotten Tomatoes it holds a 75% Tomatometer from 12 critics and a 77% audience score2. Susan Sontag, writing in Artforum, observed that nobody pictures despair and silence like Tsai, who uses the same actors and often the same apartment location film after film2. Scott Tobias, in The A.V. Club, called the film difficult and unpleasant at times but masterful as a somber metaphor for contaminated lives2.

The film is currently unavailable to stream in the United States; it was last available on the Apple TV Store until January 20224. Film Movement Classics has released it on home video in a restoration8.

Note on other films of the same title

The title The River has been used by several unrelated films, including Jean Renoir's The River (1951), set in India, and Mark Rydell's 1984 American drama about Tennessee farmers starring Mel Gibson and Sissy Spacek12 • 13. A separate horror film titled River, directed by Joshua Giuliano and starring Jane Levy and Jessica Rothe, is a later, unrelated production distributed by Universal Pictures and Blumhouse14.

References

  1. The River, International Film Festival Rotterdam 1998
  2. The River, Rotten Tomatoes
  3. Taiwan Cinema: The River (河流), Taiwan Film Institute
  4. The River (1997) streaming, JustWatch
  5. The River: Full Cast & Crew, Rotten Tomatoes
  6. He Liu, Encyclopedia.com
  7. Afflictions of Pain and Desire: The River (Tsai Ming-liang, 1997), Alex Williams, Senses of Cinema, May 2023
  8. The River, Film Movement Classics
  9. The River (He liu, Tsai Ming-liang, Taiwan, 1997), Adrian Martin
  10. The River (1997), IMDb
  11. The River (1997), Combustible Celluloid
  12. The River: A New Authenticity, The Criterion Collection
  13. The River (1984), Rotten Tomatoes
  14. River, Universal Pictures synopsis

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026

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The River (1997 film)

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