American Cinematographer - February 2002 - 32

wanted to convince him to go further
with the lighting and with color, to push
his

style to greater extremes."
The scenes staged in the film's
main location, Kang's home, illustrate
Delhomme's approach. The cinematogra¬
pher used extreme variations in color to
divide the set's small, central living
space into three distinct, meaning-filled
"I wanted the characters to expe¬
a kind of travel through different

areas.

rience

moods while

they

move

through the

room," the cinematographer explains.
He calls this attempt to tell the family's
story with lighting "composing with
color."
Delhomme lit the
located to the

with

a

250-watt bulb (dimmed to

2800°K) in
met who is

Above: The

brooding Hsiao
Kang (Lee KangSheng) watches
Franqois

Composing with Color
by Bob Davis

Truffaut's classic

Whether the

coming-of-age
film The 400
Blows.

Right: To

maintain

a

connection with

the

woman

he

desires, Kang
sets clocks in

Taipei to Paris
time. Bottom:
Director of

photography
Benoit

Delhomme, AFC

(at camera)
poses with
assistant Xavier
Tauveron while

preparing to
shoot

on a

bridge in Taipei.

traveling to France the next
day. While generally moping about, he
decides to set half the clocks in Taipei to
Paris time to maintain

protagonist in a Tsai
Ming-liang film simply trudges through
life's mundane activities or engages in
eccentric behavior (such as bowling with
watermelons), he inevitably does so with
a near-Bressonian lack of expression.
And for his first four films

-

Rebels of

and The Hole

maker and

-

his

the Taiwanese film¬

from

Taipei's
National Film Studio developed a visual
style that was equally austere, charac¬
terized by flat lighting, desaturated
colors, long takes, minimal editing, mini¬
mal dialogue and a static camera.
Tsai's

crew

new

There? takes

a

director

of

in

a new

photography

Benoit

Delhomme, AFC (The Winslow Boy,
When the Cat's Away, Cyclo) and Flong

Kong production designer Yip Kam Tim
(Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).
In the film, Tsai's protagonist,
Kang (Lee Kang-sheng, as always) deliv¬
ers the urn containing his father's ashes
to a mausoleum and tries to rein in his

mother's

entranced.

so

woman

a

medium-sized Chinese

lantern

wrapped in black to grad the
light's effect
the tabletop. The light for the family

walls and concentrate the
on

sort of

with whom

Although long takes

and wide, static shots remain, the film's
look departs from the director's signature

style by adding mixed-temperature light¬
ing, high-contrast images and poetic
aperture changes.
Delhomme admits
the deliberate way
as

a

fondness for

Asian directors such

Ozu, Mizoguchi, Hou and Wong treat

time and space, and he took Tsai's previ¬
ous work as a starting point. "I knew, of
course,

that framing the long takes

would be

a

primar/ concern for Tsai," the
cameraman says. "But I

Paris-based

film What Time Is It

tentative step

to his two new collaborators: French

increasingly oddball fantasies

about her late husband's afterlife, all the

while brooding over the woman

February 2002

he's

the Neon God, Vive I'amour, The River

direction, and that is largely attributable

30

connection with the

some

dining table,
right of the living space,

he's just

FAbMLoirlncemgi-nuSsyfhat.,y
TTIhipesmhtrote?s
What
American Cinematographer - February 2002

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