Tsai Min-liang (France-Taiwan)
Tsai Min-liang's mixes deadpan humour and repressed anguish in this story about time. When his father dies, Hsiao-Kang (Lee Kang-sheng) watches his mother's obsessive funeral rites, which begin to slide into mental illness. By day, he sells watches on the street, where he meets a pretty young woman who wants to buy his own watch, which tells time in two different time zones, because she is on her way to Paris. He becomes obsessed with turning all the clocks he can to Paris time. Meanwhile, to catch up on his Parisian lore, he buys a copy of François Truffault's The 400 Blows and watches it obsessively, and events in his life begin to strangely mirror what the girl is doing in Paris. Great bits of humour don't completely compensate for the dithering long sections of the film, though the 16-minute cut since the Cannes debut should help. - L.L.

(Sun., Sept. 9 10 p.m., Uptown; Mon. Sept. 10, 11:45 a.m. Cumberland)