Daughter Of The Nile
(Ni luo he nu er)

The Daughter of the Nile is still one of Hou Hsiaohsien’s least known films, made in the late 1980s. It breaks with the strong autobiographical hallmark found in his other films of this period and the following years. In the genealogy of his work, it is akin only to Good Men, Good Women or even more obviously to Millennium Mambo. Here, Yang Lin, the famous singer of Taiwan’s 1980s pop music, plays a student whose life is torn between the care that her sister and grandfather need, her brother’s (Jack Kao) mafia dealings and the aspirations or dreams that drive her to become the young woman of her times that she so wants to be. JB