Visage

Synopsis

A Taiwanese filmmaker makes a film based on the myth of Salomé at the Louvre, giving the part of King Herod to the French actor Jean-Pierre Léaud. For the box-office, the production company gives the role of Salomé to a famous model but problems arise as soon as filming begins.

"A François Truffaut-inspired meta-film, set mainly within the walls of the Louvre in Paris. Acting as a guide through the immense building is perennial Tsai muse Hsiao-kang (played by Lee Kang-sheng), who, camera in hand, records the movie-within-a-movie – a strange re-telling of the Richard Strauss opera Salome (1905) which in turn is based on Oscar Wilde’s play of 1891 […] Visage is a summation of the director’s principal themes of urban isolation, sexual frustration and cinematic iconography in the post-colonial world." – Erik Morse