Terrorizers
(Kong bu fen zi)

Rather than a jigsaw puzzle to be assembled, the seemingly fragmented world of Terrorizers could well be Edward Yang’s portrayal of the unrelated pages of a modern urban novel on Taipei. While the character of a woman writer struggles to write her own novel under the indifferent eyes of her engineer husband, gunshots, extra-marital affairs, a police investigation, an artistic quest (aimlessness?), a small attempt at blackmail and his contemporaries’ racketeering are linked together by an inventive editing as precise notes taken amidst the ordinary workings of a large apathetic city, whose only brightness is that of its neon lights. Everything seems to elude those who live there and whose only satisfaction derives from pleasures and intrigues that bring them no comfort. JB