Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien is certainly one of the greatest living filmmakers - and this new masterpiece acts as undeniable proof. It tells three love stories set in different eras; The vignettes, though not ostensibly related, speak to each other on the profound themes of love's fragility and the effect of transient cultural circumstances on love's ‘true' course. The film opens in 1966 with a delicate romance about a pool-hall hostess, May (a glowing Shu Qi), and the young army conscript (Chang Chen). May's counterpart in the second story, set in 1911, is a courtesan who lives and works inside the shadowy confines of a brothel and could not be more tethered to her historical moment. In the contemporary third story, a musician casually begins an affair with a photographer, leaving her female lover alone in their bed. Screened in Official Competition at the Cannes Film Festival. “Hou Hsiao-hsien's hypnotically beautiful cinematic trilogy Three Times doesn't just illuminate faces and objects; it seems to fill them up, as if they were lighted from within.” - New York Times