''Good Men, Good Women'' () is a 1995

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

ese film directed by

Hou Hsiao-hsien Hou Hsiao-hsien (; born 8 April 1947) is a Mainland Chinese-born Taiwanese film director, screenwriter, producer and actor. He is a leading figure in world cinema and in Taiwan's New Wave cinema movement. He won the Golden Lion at the Venice ...

, starring

Annie Yi Wu Chin-yi (; born March 4, 1968), better known as Annie Yi () or Annie Shizuka Inoh ( ja, 伊能静, Inō Shizuka), is a Taiwanese singer, actress, and writer. Early life and education Wu Chin-yi () was born on March 4, 1968 in Taipei, Taiwan ...

Lim Giong Lim Giong (; born 7 June 1964) is a Taiwanese musician, DJ, actor, and an active figure in the Taiwanese experimental electronic music scene. He is known for recording rock songs in Taiwanese Hokkien, starting with his first hit song "Marching F ...

, and

Jack Kao Jack Kao (, born 23 April 1958) is a Taiwanese actor. Career He began his career in the late 1980s films of Hou Hsiao-hsien. Kao credits his success to the many real-life gangsters he knew when he was young. He appeared in '' City of Sadness'' ...

. It is the last installment in the

trilogy A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected and can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, and video games, and are less common in other art forms. Three-part wor ...

that began with ''

A City of Sadness ''A City of Sadness'' () is a 1989 Taiwanese historical drama directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. It tells the story of a family embroiled in the " White Terror" that was wrought on the Taiwanese people by the Kuomintang government (KMT) after their ...

'' (1989) and continued with '' The Puppetmaster'' (1993). Like its predecessors, it deals with the complicated issues of

Taiwanese history The history of the island of Taiwan dates back tens of thousands of years to the earliest known evidence of human habitation. The sudden appearance of a culture based on agriculture around 3000 BC is believed to reflect the arrival of the ancest ...

and national identity.

Plot

The film depicts the real-life story of Chiang Bi-yu (

). In the 1940s, she and her newlywed husband, Chung Hao-tung (

), head to

mainland China "Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...

to join the anti-Japanese resistance. During the war, she is forced to give her baby up for adoption. After the war they return to Taiwan, as Chung is to distribute a

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

paper called ''The Enlightenment''. However, as the

Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...

deepens,

Chiang Kai-shek Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975), also known as Chiang Chung-cheng and Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary, and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 ...

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

government intensifies the

White Terror White Terror is the name of several episodes of mass violence in history, carried out against anarchists, communists, socialists, liberals, revolutionaries, or other opponents by conservative or nationalist groups. It is sometimes contrasted wit ...

and Chung is executed. The film consists of three intermingling storylines and scattered throughout the film are interludes of an actress (also played by Yi) who prepares for the role of Chiang Bi-yu, and also confronts her deceased boyfriend's past.

Cast

- Liang Ching / *

- *

- Ah Wel * Hsi Hsiang - Ah Hsi * - Hsiao Dao-ying * Lu Li-chin - Mrs. Hslao *

Tsai Chen-nan Tsai Chen-nan (; born 26 July 1954) is a Taiwanese actor and singer. Tsai was invited by the Hsinkang Foundation of Culture and Education to perform in Xingang, Chiayi, by the organization founder Chen Chin-huang, who sought to mitigate the ef ...

- Ah Nan *

Vicky Wei Vicky, Vicko, Vick, Vickie or Vicki is a feminine given name, often a hypocorism of Victoria. The feminine name Vicky in Greece comes from the name Vasiliki. Women * Family nickname of Victoria, Princess Royal (1840–1901), wife of German ...

- Liang Ching's Sister

Awards

''Good Men, Good Women'' won the

Golden Horse Award The Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards () is a film festival and awards ceremony held annually in Taiwan. It was founded in 1962 by the Government Information Office of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan. The awards ceremony is us ...

for best director (1995), and was shown in the

Cannes Film Festival The Cannes Festival (; french: link=no, Festival de Cannes), until 2003 called the International Film Festival (') and known in English as the Cannes Film Festival, is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films o ...

References

Silbergeld, Jerome (2004). Hitchcock With a Chinese Face: Cinematic Doubles, Oedipal Triangles, and China's Moral Voice. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press.

External links

* * 1995 films 1995 drama films Taiwanese war drama films 1990s Mandarin-language films Films directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien Japanese films Films with screenplays by Chu T’ien-wen {{Taiwan-film-stub