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In the pantheon of modern cinema, few directors possess the patience and poetic sensibility of Hou Hsiao-Hsien. His 2005 film, Three Times (originally titled Zui Hao De Shi Guang), stands as one of his most accessible yet profoundly moving works. A triptych of stories set in three different time periods, the film serves as a meditation on the elasticity of time, the constraints of society, and the enduring, unchanging nature of human longing.
Structured as three distinct segments, the film stars Shu Qi and Chang Chen in every episode, playing different characters who circle one another in various stages of romantic tension. By stripping away traditional narrative continuity, Hou invites the audience to focus not on the outcome of a relationship, but on the texture of the moments that define it.
The third segment is the most controversial and the most heartbreaking. It is set in contemporary Taipei (2005). Chang Chen plays a photographer named Zhang. Shu Qi plays a singer named Jing. But Zhang is also a young man haunted by a past life—or is it a dream? The segment blurs reality, hallucination, and memory.
The film shifts dramatically for its second act, transporting the viewer to the era of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan. Hou employs a bold stylistic choice here: the segment is presented as a silent film, complete with intertitles and a lush, orchestral score. three times hou hsiao hsien
This artistic decision serves a dual purpose. On a narrative level, it mirrors the social repression of the time. The characters—a rising intellectual and a courtesan known as "The Flute Girl"—are trapped by their social stations and the rigid hierarchies of the era. They cannot speak their true desires aloud, and thus, the cinema itself silences them.
Visually, this segment is sumptuous, with deep browns and golds evoking a sense of nostalgia and antiquity. The political backdrop of the 1911 revolution provides a turbulent context, but the focus remains intimate. Unlike the hopeful quiet of the first segment, "A Time for Freedom" is defined by a tragic, polite distance. The characters are paralyzed by duty and history, unable to bridge the gap between them.
Hou’s late-career masterpiece. Set in 9th-century Tang dynasty, it follows a female assassin (Shu Qi) ordered to kill her cousin, a political lord she once loved. The Shape of Love: A Journey Through Three
Hou shoots this segment in his signature long takes—no close-ups, no reaction shots. The camera sits at a medium distance, watching the characters enter and exit the frame. There is a famous sequence where Chen searches for May across three different towns. We see him board a bus, wait in the rain, knock on a door, and leave. The entire sequence contains almost no dialogue.
This is Hou Hsiao-hsien’s first masterstroke: he understands that young love is defined not by what is said, but by the waiting. The boy waits for a letter. The girl waits for a visit. The audience waits for a kiss that never quite arrives.
If you ask a cinephile to name the single most defining characteristic of Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien’s work, they will likely give you one answer: stillness. But in his 2005 masterpiece, Three Times (最好的時光), Hou redefined that stillness. He turned it into a kaleidoscope. The film is a triptych—three separate love stories set in three distinct eras of 20th-century Taiwan, each starring the same two actors (Shu Qi and Chang Chen) playing different lovers. Period popular songs function as leitmotifs (especially in
But to watch Three Times is not merely to watch three short films. It is to experience three times Hou Hsiao-hsien at three different peaks of his directorial power. It is a film about the impossibility of perfect timing, the weight of history, and the quiet ache of what remains unsaid.
Below, we break down the film’s three segments not just as narratives, but as distinct cinematic languages. Each part represents a different "time" in Hou’s own artistic evolution.
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