In Tsai Ming-liang's acclaimed and disturbing film on Taiwan's urban youth subculture, the kids are so alienated from the older generation and its values that there is not even enough common ground for conflict. Hsiao-kang is virtually unable to carry on a conversation with his father, while his mother resorts to occult Taoism to interpret her son's bewildering behavior. Hsiao-kang's mute, malign aimlessness contrasts with the sometimes stoic, sometimes cheerful desperation of the hardened delinquents Ah-tze and Ah-bing, and the bed-hopping skating-rink girl Ah-kuei. They make the best of their mazelike late-night world of motorcycles, video arcades, and petty crime, recognizing on some level that there is no way out. "No other director since Fassbinder has got inside young male anomie with such tenderness and warmth. (Tsai) does it without the usual breastbeating dialogue. This is a piercingly visual film." (Tony Rayns, Berlin, '93)