Characterized as “Yang’s most difficult, intellectually provocative, and structurally challenging film” (John Anderson), Edward Yang’s third feature-length film is a puzzle with immense reverberatory power. The Terrorizers depicts the intertwining of love and death among three different couples: a young photographer and his literary girlfriend; a middle-class and middle-aged married couple whose mutual estrangement grows to the point of no return; and a delinquent duo whose income comes from committing petty pickpocketing and blackmailing. Prank phone calls, amateur photography, writer’s block and coveted promotions serendipitously bring these separate lives together. As close relationships come to a dissolution, the distinctions between life and art, fiction and reality also edge toward implosion.

Directed by Edward Yang. With Cora Miao, Lee Li-Chun, King Shih-Chieh

Taiwan 1986, DCP, color, 110 min. Mandarin and Min Nan with English subtitles