Hou Hsiao-Hsien reviewed

摘要

Press reviews of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films appeared in a range of European magazines at a time when Hou's films were hardly, if at all, available for watching in European cinemas. This essay asks what, in this context, may have been the reviews' function. By way of an examination of a representative sample of these texts, I argue that, far from negotiating a relationship between, on the one hand, the producers, distributors and exhibitors of Hou's films and, on the other hand, Hou's European public, reviews of Hou's films served to mediate the gradual and capillary instillation of new modes of viewing films. Reaching Europe very sparingly at a time when European cinemas had finally capitulated to the increasingly aggressive marketing strategies of distributors of Hollywood produce, the construction of Hou Hsiao-Hsien as an auteur became available for the 'educational' realignment needed in order to sell Hollywood cinema better, not in spite of, but because of, the negligible European circulation of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's films.