New Trailer for Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole Ahead of 35mm Theatrical Run

Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole has occupied a large-enough place in cinephilia these last 25 years that it’s sort of baffling to realize the film is just now getting an official stateside run. For this alone, Big World Pictures deserves credit; our thanks are issued twofold for doing so on a new 35mm print. The Hole inhabits so many forms—apocalyptic dread, romantic meet-cute, gross-out comedy, social critique, slow-cinema masterclass, and (not least of all) musical—that whether you’re finally discovering or returning to it after some time, Tsai’s movie remains revelatory. Ahead of its July 10 opening at Film at Lincoln Center (with North American engagements to follow) a new trailer has arrived.

Here’s the official synopsis: “Set on the eve of the 21st century, Tsai Ming-liang’s fourth feature turns a crumbling Taipei apartment block into one of cinema’s strangest and most tender end-of-the-world romances. Perennial muse Lee Kang-sheng (‘the man upstairs’) and Yang Kuei-mei (‘the woman downstairs’) are among the building’s last holdouts, refusing evacuation as a mysterious epidemic spreads outside and rain batters the city without end. When a plumber leaves behind an unfinished repair, the man’s floor opens into an accidental passage between two sealed-off lives, turning leaks, trash, pesticide, and petty territorial warfare into a strange form of courtship. Among the most disarmingly funny and cathartic entries in Tsai’s filmography, The Hole finds hope in a world that seems to be falling apart, breaking its deadpan plague scenario open with splendorous Grace Chang musical numbers and poker-faced slapstick. Returning to FLC for its first-ever dedicated New York theatrical release on a newly struck 35mm print, this 1998 vision of isolation remains uncannily, exhilaratingly prescient.”

Find a new preview and poster below: