Tsai’s most recent feature, What Time Is It There? is composed of long sequence shots that connect the tale of a young man grieving the death of his father in Taipei with the story of an attractive young Taiwanese woman on vacation in Paris. The two are initially brought together when she stops in the man’s makeshift skywalk stand to buy a dual-time watch in advance of her trip. The young man ends up selling her his own watch and finds his grief transformed into an obsession with the woman and the distant locale of Paris. He begins to immerse himself in French culture (including the cinema of François Truffaut) and embarks on a mission to reset all the clocks in Taipei to Paris time. Tsai elegantly intercuts the shopkeeper’s eccentric behavior back in Taiwan with the woman’s own odd encounters in Paris, including crossing paths with Jean-Pierre Leaud at a Paris cemetery.

This small-scale urban story takes up where What Time Is It There? left off—as the Parisian traveler from the earlier film returns to Taipei and searches for the skywalk where she had purchased her watch from the grieving vendor. It is no longer there. She is forced to cross the busy city street instead, a metaphor for the disconnectedness of contemporary urban life. The absent skywalk is a symbol both for the longing of the characters and a figurative bridge between their first story and what promises to be director Tsai’s next feature.