It takes a while before we realize that the three central characters in The River are members of the same family: son, father and mother. They share a rundown apartment in Taipei but rarely speak to each other and lead very separate lives. The father, retired, visits gay saunas for furtive hand-jobs. The mother is close to ending an affair with an apathetic lover. The son has no job or obvious prospects. It takes two crises to bring these people a little closer together. One is physical: the boy develops an agonizing pain in his neck and shoulder after floating in the heavily polluted Tamsui River. The other is domesic: a leak from the empty apartment upstairs threatens to destroy the fathers′s room. The only link between these two crises is the motif of water, but between them they expose everything which makes the family dysfunctional. Tsai′s shattering film is the last part of a trilogy on character caught between unarticulated emotions and feelings they hardly dare admit even to themselves. The River is less droll the other films, but it cuts deeper into its characters′ psyches. The moment when the two family crises simultaneously come to a head is the moment when the characters finally see themselves absolutely naked. (Tony Rayns)