Despite being virtually ignored by critics who have previously hailed Hou Hsiao-Hsien as one of the greatest filmmakers working today, Millennium Mambo has achieved something that none of Hou's earlier features was able to: theatrical distribution in the U.S. The irony, of course, is that just as Hou's work has an opportunity to reach a wider audience in this country, his champions are looking down their noses at the film's one-note characters who are apparently unworthy of Hou's attention.

Millennium Mambo is the story of Vicky, played by popular pin-up model Shu Qi, a modern young woman in Taipei who has a little money in the bank and not much to do besides smoke, drink, and hang out at clubs with her friends. She bounces between her controlling, on-again-off-again boyfriend Hao-hao and the older, possibly wiser Jack, with occasional detours to a snowy part of Japan. Each of the three corners of Vicky's globe has a gravitational pull on her, sometimes defying all reason, and the movie artfully balances them and seems to weigh them for their worth, just as Vicky is doing the same.

It's not hard to see why American distributors have been reluctant to pick up Hou's movies. He watches his characters through very long takes without introducing them, follows them through minimal storylines that are about as far from the boilerplate three-act structure as a plot can get, adopts a complex inner logic for each movie that governs all of the elements, and has a particular interest in the turbulent history of Taiwan. Finding an audience in this country is bound to be an uphill battle, but movies that focus on individuals rather than institutions, as Hou's invariably do, can reach beyond the cultures in which they were born. Hou's three movies about Taiwan's 20th century, for example — A City of Sadness, The Puppetmaster, and Good Men, Good Women — tell their tales of national identity through the eyes of ordinary people, and Western audiences can gain a great deal from these movies without understanding all of the subtleties of Taiwan's history, as long as they're comfortable with being a bit mystified at times, which frankly can be one of the pleasures of seeing a foreign movie.

Writing in LA Weekly, John Powers remarked, "By my reckoning, Hou has made at least 10 better movies," and I can't disagree, but it's a statement that sounds more damning than it actually is. By consistently delivering thought-provoking material and exploring new configurations of his characteristic style, Hou has set the bar very high. Millennium Mambo is atypical in some ways, more urban and tense than most of his movies, and while he's no stranger to characters that seem stuck in cul-de-sacs, Vicky and Hao-hao don't seem as interested in transcending their condition as the similar characters in Goodbye, South Goodbye and Good Men, Good Women.

Despite these differences, Millennium Mambo deserves its place in Hou's oeuvre. Visually it's not far removed from the beautiful fishbowl apartment of Good Men, Good Women or the self-contained world of Flowers of Shanghai. Shot by Mark Lee, every frame is gorgeous, pulsing with colorful light that finds its way from the street to the bedroom via panes of glass or strands of beads. One of Hou's strengths, which is as obvious here as in any of his movies, is his sense of space. He fully utilizes the three dimensions of his locations not by roving through the hallways — his camera rarely moves — but by making the audience aware of spaces beyond the camera's reach such that his worlds feel observed rather than constructed. People disappear through doorways, but they still exist. They don't stand artificially in front of the camera. If they need to move into the kitchen to get something, they do, and Hou's camera waits for their return. In Millennium Mambo he seems fascinated by the way characters pass through boundaries, from hallways into apartments, from bedrooms into living rooms. The frame is often packed with people and furniture, reflecting not only the character's physical locations but also their lives. They're bouncing off of each other like volatile molecules in a heated container, in desperate need of fresh air but too numb to know it. The way the music connects and contrasts those locations, something Hou has rarely done to such a degree, is often sublime.

If Millennium Mambo's weakness is in its characters — hollow, selfish, and aimless — then the movie redeems itself by urging them toward serenity in a strangely moving final chapter. Hou originally intended the film to be the first in a series about young adults in present day Taiwan, and this long-range view of youth makes even the first installment unusually reflective. It's narrated from the future: "This happened 10 years ago, in 2001," says an oddly detached female voice, presumably Vicky's, even though she refers to herself in the third person. It's as if she sees her younger self, the one we're watching drift through empty days and nights, as a different person entirely. To escape the techno beats of Taipei, Vicky takes a brief trip to Japan where she strolls down an "avenue of film" and presses her face into a snow bank. The indentation that she leaves behind is sure to melt, like the faces on the movie posters hanging above her. Vicky strolls, wrapped in the heavy isolation of a winter coat amid the white stillness of a blanket of snow; this moment stands in contrast to her mesmerizing, slow-motion stride through a pedestrian walkway in the movie's opening minutes, where she's light and confident. The new millennium is an excuse for a party, but it's also a marker in time, a reminder of fleeting days. By the end of the movie, Vicky is a woman in search of permanence.

After completing Millennium Mambo, Hou put the series on hold to spend some time bolstering the Taiwanese film industry and making an homage to Yasujiro Ozu, two worthwhile ventures. But I hope he returns to the project. A country and its history are reflected in its people, and few filmmakers capture them so well.