20:30:40

San Francisco Premiere

Taiwan/Hong Kong | 113mins | 35mm Color | Mandarin, Cantonese & Hokkien w/E.S.

Perhaps best known in the United States for her role in Ang Lee's EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN, veteran actress Sylvia Chang has also garnered attention as the director of such acute chronicles of the modern Taiwanese or Hong Kong woman as SIAO YU (SFIAAFF '96) and TEMPTING HEART. With her delightful 10th feature, 20:30:40, she triples the pleasure with a cross-generational portrait of three women in Taipei whose lives are in transition: 20-year-old Xiao Jie (Angelica Lee Sinje), an aspiring pop singer from Malaysia whose friendship with her bubbly singing partner seems to take a romantic turn; 30-something flight attendant Xiang (Rene Liu), who's growing weary of her itinerant lifestyle and noncommittal affairs, and middle-aged florist Lily (Chang herself), who takes her newfound freedom after a divorce and dives headfirst into the dating scene. Chang elegantly weaves the tangentially connected stories into an unpretentious and exuberant tapestry of the women's vigorous, often comical quest for identity, stability and companionship. With enough moxie and humor to satisfy SEX AND THE CITY devotees, but with a knowing poignancy akin to Chang's compatriots Edward Yang and Ang Lee, 20:30:40 exposes the melancholy underside of independence with uncommon honesty and tenderness.

—Taro Goto

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