Three Times is not a movie to see after a hectic workday wherein you’ve just flown back from Boston. I picked this film because I vaguely recall reading a gushing review of it. The structure of it certainly appealed to me: directed by Hsiao-hsien Hou, it features Chen Chang (of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame) and Qi Shu playing a different couple in love within a trio of vignettes taking place in China in 1966, 1911 and 2005.
But the movie runs long and feels even longer than its running time: each vignette takes roughly 40 minutes, but the mostly static takes stretch out at a leisurely pace, nothing much happens and there is little dialog—in fact the 1911 segment has effectively no dialogue, featuring instead updated versions of old-time “dialogue cards” intercut into scenes. There are beautiful subtleties, like the couple at the end of the 1966 segment holding hands as an expression of their bottled-up feelings for one another. And I liked how a few key elements, including a love letter (in the 2005 segment, it’s a text message on a cellphone), recurred in all three timeframes. But these moments are far between the lengthy scenes of mundane or repetitious activity. I can appreciate artfully slow movies, but this one was too poky for even me.