Winner of the Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival, Hou Hsiao - hsien's («Flight of the Red Balloon») first film in eight years, The Assassin (Nie yin niang), may initially seem out of character for a director whose previous work has been in
realistic social dramas set in a contemporary historical context.
Offbeat and funny but thoroughly
realistic, this period
drama explores issues of family, youth and
social pressure through the eyes of a 15 - year - old who's just starting to realise that people perhaps are more complicated than...