White Days (2009)

Dreaming of a trip to Taiwan but stuck in a city they can't seem to leave from, three young people get together to create a friendship net that would save them from their inanimate loneliness. An unsterilized black & white image, with a documentary-like gray realism, provides the setting for a series of conversations and situations that have as much everyday nihilism as religious theories bordering the ridicule. With an overwhelming contemporary spirit, and a lucid pop art cinephilia, Tsai Ming-liang and Richard Linklater come together as explicit and essential references for White Days' main characters, but also for its director, who combines the theme of young lethargic people engaging in sharp dialog -Linkater's slackers- with the challenging aesthetics that implies taking a wide shot and creating a universe populated by Tsai's vanishing point.