Daughter of the Nile

Daughter of the Nile
(Ni luo he nyu er)
(I kori tou Neilou)
Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien
Produced by Lu Wen-jen
Written by Chu Tien-wen
Starring Jack Kao
Tianlu Li
Fu Sheng Tsui
Fan Yang
Lin Yang
Music by Chang Hung-yi
Cih-Yuan Ch'en
Cinematography Chen Huai-en
Edited by Ching-Song Liao
Production
company
Fu-Film
Release dates
  • October 1987 (1987-10)
Running time
 91 minutes
Country Taiwan
Language Mandarin

Daughter of the Nile (Ni luo he nyu er) (I kori tou Neilou) is a 1987 film by Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsiao-Hsien.[1][2][3]

Background

The film's title is a reference to a character in a manga called Crest of the Royal Family who is hailed as Daughter of the Nile.[4] The film is a study of the life of young people in contemporary Taipei urban life, focusing on the marginalised figure of a woman and centred on a fast-food server's hapless crush on a gigolo.[5] The introductory sequence of the film suggests a parallel between the difficulties faced by people in the film (Taiwan's urban youth, transitioning from a classical civilization into a changing world) and the mythic struggles of characters in the Egyptian Book of the Dead.

It features Taiwan pop singer Lin Yang,[3] Jack Kao (Kao Jai) as her brother, and Tianlu Li in the role of the grandfather. Li became a central part of Hou's major films, and Kao starred in several of them.

Synopsis

Lin Hsiao-yang (Lin Yang), tries to keep her family together while working as a waitress at Kentucky Fried Chicken and going to night school. Her mother and older brother are dead. Her father (Fu Sheng Tsui) works out of town. It's up to Lin Hsiao-yang to take care of her pre-teen sister, who has already begun to steal, and a brother (Jack Kao) who is a burglar and gang member.[4]

Cast[6]

Additional cast

Critical response

In his in-depth analysis of Daughter of the Nile, Michael Joshua Rowin of Reverse Shot wrote that Daughter is one of Hou's most accessible films, and that although the film never found theatrical distribution in the United States and never received a home video release, its foreshadowing of the themes Hou would later use in Millennium Mambo, Hou's first film to be distributed in the United States, make Daughter ripe for rediscovery, summarizing "Daughter's themes and immediate imagery would be the future of Hou.".[3]

Screenings and reception

The film was originally released in October 1987 at the Turin International Film Festival of Young Cinema in Italy, where it won a Special Jury Prize in the International Feature Film Competition for Hou Hsiao-hsien. When it screened in January 1988 at the AFI Fest, the Washington Post wrote "Hou Hsiao-hsien has the slickness that gives Daughter of the Nile the most East-West crossover appeal.[7] In September 1988 it screened at both the Toronto Festival of Festivals and the New York Film Festival.[4] After the NYFF screening, Vincent Canby of the New York Times wrote the film "...is not about alienation as much as it is an example of it. It is an artifact from a revolution taking place elsewhere".[8] When it aired at the Chicago International Film Festival in October, 1988, Lloyd Sachs of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote "slow and grudgingly revealing, Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien's "Daughter of the Nile" does not lend itself to easy description".[9]

In October 1999 the film was screened as part of a Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective by New York's Anthology Film Archives.[3][10][11] In October 2000 it was screened in a Taiwanese film retrospective at both the National Gallery of Art and the Freer Gallery.[12]

In April 2002 in screened at the Buenos Aires International Festival of Independent Cinema in Brazil, and in 2005 it screened at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in Greece.

In December 2006 it screened as part of a Hou Hsiao-hsien retrospective at the Canadian National Film Repository.[13]

Awards

Daughter of the Nile won the special jury prize at the 1987 Turin International Festival of Young Cinema, and entered into the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival.

Additional reading

References

  1. ↑ "Daughter of the Nile (1987) production credits". New York Times. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  2. ↑ "HOU Hsiao-Hsien". Film Reference. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
  3. 1 2 3 4 Rowin, Michael Joshua. "Daughter of the Nile: Lost City". Reverse Shot. Hou Hsiao-hsien (23). Retrieved June 7, 2009.
  4. 1 2 3 Canby, Vincent (September 30, 1988). "Rootless in Americanized Taiwan". New York Times. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  5. ↑ "Songs For Swinging Lovers, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Aesthetic strategies". British Film Institute. August 2006. Retrieved June 6, 2009.
  6. ↑ "Daughter of the Nile (1987) acting credits". New York Times. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  7. ↑ Cheng, Scarlet (January 31, 1988). "Electric Images of the Other China; Festival Showcases the New Wave of Films From Taiwan". Washington Post. Retrieved June 8, 2008.
  8. ↑ Canby, Vincent (October 23, 1988). "FILM VIEW; Why Some Movies Don't Travel Well". New York Times. p. 2. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  9. ↑ Sachs, Lloyd (October 25, 1988). "'Daughter of the Nile' is challenging, unsettling film". Chicago Sun-Times. p. 38. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  10. ↑ Hoberman, J. (October 12, 1999). "Time Regained". Village Voice. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  11. ↑ "an unfolding horizon: the films of hou hsiao-hsien". New York Film Festival. October 1999. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
  12. ↑ "FILM NOTES; More Films at Visions; Taiwanese Retrospective". Washington Post. September 8, 2000. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  13. ↑ "The Calendar: A selection of events happening this week, Cinematheque quebecoise". The Gazette. December 8, 2006. Retrieved June 8, 2009.
  14. ↑ Chang, Sung-sheng (2004). "7, High Culture Aspirations and Transformations of Mainstream Fiction". Literary culture in Taiwan: martial law to market law. Columbia University Press. p. 176. ISBN 9780231132343. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
  15. ↑ Kasman, Daniel (2006). "Hou Hsiou-hsien's Urban Female Youth Trilogy". Senses of Cinema. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
  16. ↑ Browne, Nick (1994). "6, The Ideology of Initiation: The Films of Hou Hsiou-hsien". New Chinese cinemas: forms, identities, politics. Cambridge University Press. pp. 151–158. ISBN 9780521448772. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
  17. ↑ Yip, June Chun (2004). "4, Toward Post-Modernism: The "Global Teenager" and Hou Hsiou-hsien's Daughter of the Nile"". Envisioning Taiwan : fiction, cinema, and the nation in the cultural imaginary (illustrated ed.). Duke University Press. pp. 222–229. ISBN 9780822333678. Retrieved June 7, 2009.
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