General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Three Times (最好的时光)

Three Times (最好的時光) is a 2005 Taiwanese anthology romance film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien, consisting of three love stories set in 1966, 1911, and 2005, with Shu Qi and Chang Chen each playing the lead in all three segments.¹^•² It competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and won Best Actress and Best Taiwanese Film of the Year at the 42nd Golden Horse Awards.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Director and screenplay	Hou Hsiao-hsien; screenplay by Chu Tien-wen and Hou Hsiao-hsien⁴
Structure	Three segments: "A Time for Love" (戀愛夢, 1966), "A Time for Freedom" (自由夢, 1911), and "A Time for Youth" (青春夢, 2005)⁵
Cast	Shu Qi and Chang Chen in the lead roles of all three segments; supporting cast includes Mei Fang, Di Mei, Liao Shu-chen, and Lee Pei-hsuan²^•⁶
Key crew	Cinematography Mark Lee Ping-bin; editing Liao Ching-song; sound Tu Duu-chih; art director Huang Wen-ying⁴^•⁶
Production	3H Films, Paradis Films, Orly Films, and Sinomovie; a France–Taiwan co-production⁴
Release	Taiwan premiere 28 October 2005; in competition at Cannes 2005²^•¹
Awards	42nd Golden Horse Awards: Best Actress (Shu Qi) and Best Taiwanese Film of the Year, from 11 nominations³
Critical scores	86% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (51 reviews); Metascore 82 on Metacritic⁷^•⁸

Spoilers

The three segments

The film presents its stories out of chronological order, opening in 1966, returning to 1911, and ending in 2005.⁹ Its Cannes synopsis explains the title through loss: a moment is remembered as wonderful not because it was wonderful when it happened, but because it is gone forever and can only be recalled.¹

A Time for Love (戀愛夢), 1966. In Kaohsiung, a young man about to enter military service (Chang Chen) meets May (Shu Qi), a scorekeeper at a pool hall. After enlisting, he returns on leave to find she has quit and moved to another pool hall, and much of the segment follows his search for her across central and southern Taiwan.¹⁰^•¹¹ Hou based this segment on his own youth.¹²

A Time for Freedom (自由夢), 1911. Set in Dadaocheng, Taipei, during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan and on the eve of the Xinhai Revolution, the segment follows a courtesan (Shu Qi) in love with a revolutionary intellectual (Chang Chen) who neglects her in favor of his political activities.⁶^•¹³ The segment is presented in the manner of a silent film, with intertitles instead of spoken dialogue.¹²

A Time for Youth (青春夢), 2005. In contemporary Taipei, Jing (Shu Qi), an epileptic singer born prematurely who is losing sight in her right eye, lives with her girlfriend Micky while beginning an affair with Zhen (Chang Chen), who works in a digital photo shop and has a girlfriend of his own.¹⁰ The character of Jing is based on a real person, Ouyang Jing.¹⁴

Form and style

The three segments are linked by recurring actors and by parallel situations rather than by plot, and the festival synopsis describes the film as a sentimental tale evoking the triple reincarnation of one love.⁶^•¹ Dialogue is reduced to a minimum throughout: the first segment contains fewer than ten lines of speech, the 1911 segment communicates through intertitles, and the 2005 characters often talk past each other or through text messages and glass doors.⁵

Music marks each era. The 1966 segment alternates English-language oldies, including The Platters' "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes," with Taiwanese songs sung by Wen Xia, reflecting the presence of American popular culture in 1960s Taiwan; the 1911 segment uses nan-guan, a southern Chinese chamber music tradition associated with the courtesan's constrained world; the 2005 segment is dominated by urban noise and flat electronic music.⁵^•¹⁵ The film also uses fixed camera positions and repeated, ritual-like actions, such as the scorekeeper opening and closing the pool hall, to convey the passage of time.⁵

Release and reception

Three Times was Hou's sixth film to compete in the Cannes main competition.¹⁶ A re-edited final version, changed after the Cannes screening, opened the 2005 Busan International Film Festival.¹⁷ It opened in Taiwan on 28 October 2005.² Reported running times differ between releases: 132 minutes for the Taiwanese version, 131 minutes at Cannes, 137 minutes in the French visa record, and 120 minutes in Cineuropa's listing.²^•¹^•¹⁸^•⁴

At the 42nd Golden Horse Awards, held on 13 November 2005 in Keelung, the film received 11 nominations, including Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Actor, and Best Actress, and won Best Actress for Shu Qi and Best Taiwanese Film of the Year; Hou was also named Best Taiwanese Film Worker of the Year.³^•⁵ Despite the awards, the film's Taiwanese box office was weak, which commentators attributed to its slow, restrained narrative style and to shortcomings in distribution and marketing.⁵

Critical reception abroad was strongly positive. Rotten Tomatoes recorded an 86% Tomatometer from 51 reviews, with a critics' consensus calling the film "slowly paced, understated, and exquisitely shot," and Metacritic assigned a Metascore of 82, its label for universal acclaim.⁷^•⁸ Reviewers divided over the segments: the critic Jonathan Rosenbaum judged the first episode the most satisfying in plot and the last the least, while crediting the film's achievement to the articulated similarities and differences among the three, in composition, use of space and music, and the performances of the two stars.¹⁹ The Washington Post's Stephen Hunter praised the 1966 section as "pure lyricism" and found the 2005 section a "jangly, modernist mess."¹¹

Place in Hou's career

Commentators have noted that each segment echoes an earlier Hou film: the 1966 story recalls his 1980s realist youth pictures such as The Boys from Fengkuei (1983) and A Time to Live and a Time to Die (1985), the 1911 story revisits the brothel world of Flowers of Shanghai (1998), and the 2005 story parallels Millennium Mambo (2001).⁵^•²⁰ Unlike his earlier films centered on Taiwanese political history, Hou described Three Times as simply a love story.¹⁶ In 2025 the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival used the film as the inspiration for its festival visual, with Shu Qi contributing calligraphy and Chang Chen photographs.²¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 2000s › Romantic drama films 2000s

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

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