Out of Step

You come down from your world to mine," says a frustrated Hao-hao to his girlfriend Vicky. "That's why you don't understand my world." Don't blame the poor girl: nobody else gets it either, and that includes both Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien and, very likely, his audience. Hou has swapped his wonted rural palette for the urban hip of Taipei, but for all his efforts to capture the contemporary, Mambo feels mute.

The film opens with a sound-tracked, slo-mo Vicky (Shu Qi) striding across a flyover at night, with the camera at her back. Time enough for her to...