The River

"A masterpiece!... Terrifying and Beautiful!" - Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

A mother, father and son live together in a small apartment in Taipei but lead very separate lives. The son, Xiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng) drifts through life without a job; the mother is an elevator operator having an affair with a man who pirates pornographic movies; and the father pursues illicit pleasures in the city's gay saunas and is on a mission to stop the leaking water from the apartment upstairs. When the son is stricken with an agonizing pain in his neck and shoulders, seemingly from taken an ill-advised dunk in the polluted Tansui River, the family is driven on a quest to alleviate the son's pain.