by SARAH ROWLAND

If sitting through quiet Asian films has the same effect on you as washing down ’ludes with extra strength Neo Citran, then director Hou Hsiao-Hsien is not the man for you.

Using very few words and the same two actors (Shu Qi and Chang Chen), Hsiao-Hsien delivers a triple-shot of Taiwanese culture through three unrelated love stories. The first installation, “A Time for Love,” takes place in the ’60s and follows a smitten young soldier (Chen) as he searches high and low for the painfully shy pool hall hostess (Qi) he met and fell in love with over a game of billiards. There’s not much in the way of dialogue here, and there really needn’t be. Both leads do a stunning job of conveying the power of puppy love through awkward body language. Even the way these two gulp and slurp their noodles would make Lady and the Tramp proud.

For “A Time for Freedom,” Hsiao-Hsien throws words out the window all together. Set in 1911, this silent segment follows the doomed love of a concubine and her revolutionary master, who’s too obsessed with his nation’s freedom to settle down. The two pine for each other over tea, exchanging longing looks of unfulfilled desire (think Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with no sound or action sequences). Again, depending on your appetite for contemplative Asian cinema, this gorgeously-shot chapter can either be viewed as a cinematic poem to behold or a cue to take a leak before the final chapter.

Fast-forwarding to present-day Taipei, “A Time For Youth” has Chen playing a photographer lusting after a punk rock epileptic singer (Qi). The problem is he has a girlfriend and so does she. Yet he can’t stay away. Which is understandable, considering that Qi is

so beautiful it’s almost stupid. By all appearances, she’s a genetically modified hybrid of the entire Memoirs of a Geisha cast (the regal carriage of Michelle Yeoh, the stone cold fox appeal of Gong Li and childlike innocence of Ziyi Zhang).

But Qi is also a damn fine actress. Her performance, combined with Hsiao-Hsien’s sumptuous compositions, make Three Times well worth the price of admission—that is if you have a taste for this type of thing.

Three Times opens at Cinéma du Parc Friday, March 17

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