Pictures

One day we met, only to realize that it was not the same day...

Synopsis

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream -- Edger Allen Poe

Singing keeps having a recurrent dream—she sees a boy shouting at her but she can neither see his face nor hear what he says. One night at sea on a ferry, she comes across a young soldier who claims to be her future lover. The girl pays no attention to the soldier’s seemingly ridiculous story, but a series of mysterious incidents makes her begin to wonder if he might be telling the truth.

Bridging islands, transcending loneliness, beyond thought and feeling-- we have but to dream. Produced by acclaimed director Hou Hsiao Hsien, “One Day” is a visual love poem of magical realism presented by the talented young filmmaker Hou Chi-Jan, the winner of the Grand Prix of the Taipei International Film Festival, and starring the Golden Horse Award-winning actress Nikki Hsin-Ying Hsieh and the Golden Bell Award-winning actor Bryan Shu-Hao Chang.

Director's Statement

Cinema can go beyond reality and muddle up our memories.

When I was nineteen, I spent days in a study centre near the Taipei Station preparing for exams. I found the study centre an intriguing and fascinating place; everyone was confined to desks in cubicles. The students probably spent more time napping at the desk than studying. Every time I walked pass rows of silently sleeping students, I couldn’t help guessing about what they were dreaming of at that moment.

When I was twenty-two, I drew the short straw for my military service, and was assigned to serve in Kinmen, a remote island far away from Taiwan. Before assuming that assignment, I was dispatched to a hillside military base in Kaohsiung to guard the boat bound for Kinmen. Every night on sentry duty, I would sneak out to make a phone call, a call that was never answered. Hearing the continuous ringing, I gazed at the distant light glowing from Kaohsiung city, which lay quietly at the bottom of the hill. Those were the moments when I felt the loneliness of youth and the intangible nature of love…

I eventually boarded the boat for Kinmen. Apart from the sound of the waves at night, my only companions were A-mei’s song, “Listen to the Sea”, and the radio songs of Faye Wong. Years later, I began to tell stories in which the study center, the military base, the boat and the sea kept changing, extending, expanding and linking up with each other in my reconstructed, repeated memories. In the end, everything was pieced together and it is from there that this film, “One Day”, was born.

Cinema can go beyond reality and enter the realm of muddled memories. But the eagerness and expectation, borne of bored youth made to wait long, can never be faked.