Tsai Ming-liang's lead actor turns director with this surprisingly experimental companion piece to Goodbye, Dragon Inn (see April 25), made at the same time and with several interlocking characters. It's a (shockingly) sunny day in Taipei, and two people unknowingly share a similar fate: a grandmother is looking for her missing grandson, and a grandson is looking for his missing grandfather. Director Lee follows them on their search, mapping their geography of panic and rising incomprehension onto a city where history appears paved over, and where even outdoor parks have walls. Shooting verité style, Lee films with a concealed camera as his actors weave through crowds, storm across streets, and accost total strangers. As a result, The Missing is fascinating as a document of contemporary Taipei, an experimental vision of its public space that focuses on not only its look, but its citizens' relationship to it. “Only when it is missing do we miss what we had....What's most frightening is you often don't know why so many beautiful things would suddenly vanish,” Lee writes. The film's success rests in its many metaphorical levels for “the missing”: grandson/grandfather, the dead, the unseen Taiwanese middle generation whose parents and children these grandmothers and grandsons are, or the landmarks and history of an entire cityscape.