A lanky man with a shy smile and silvering hair, he is proud of the lack of a single perspective in his films. I try to keep my viewpoint, any single viewpoint, out of my films. I think an engineering background helps. Yang's half-dozen films, few of which have been seen in North America, have embraced the cacophony and constant displacement of urban life. This is a film about people who are conditioned by the city, and I think it's important to consider the ways the city creates an isolated sense of individuality and also puts people together in new and unique ways.
Cities make life into something that carries a lot of echoes and repetitions and coincidences.
A middle-aged man reprising a thwarted romantic interlude from his youth, while his daughter has an echo of the same interlude. If things happen again, they will happen more or less the same way. We all push the limit and try our best the first time round, and so we shouldn't feel bad about ourselves. At this moment, we are plunged into darkness. One of California's rolling power blackouts has cut off electricity to this wealthy neighbourhood, and we are momentarily imprisoned.