Year: 1997
Country: Taiwan
Director: Ming-liang Tsai
Cast: Miao Tien, Kang-sheng Lee, Yi-ching Lu, Ann Hui
IMDB: Link

Language : Chinese
Subtitles : English, Italian





Before reading The River as a statement on gay life in Greater China, it may be useful to look at it more closely as a metaphor for the postmodern condition generally and as an allegory for Taiwan as a political entity. Although associated with sexuality, yin /femininity, and the sex industry in Chinese thought, water, an important destructive and unifying element in all of Tsai’s films, also evokes a more specifically ethnic incarnation of the
flow of the Chinese “life force” in The River . Thus, the title of the film itself conjures the “pure” ethnic roots of the Han Chinese in the Yellow River valley, with its transmutation into the polluted Tanshui River as a sign of the decline of civilization generally and Chinese society specifically. The water offers less of a hope for renewal through flow and movement and more of a promise of destruction through either stagnation or flooding. Although
Taipei’s shopping malls, department-store exteriors, hotel rooms, and other transnational commercial spaces like McDonald’s restaurants offer the concretization of a modernist dream of uniform material prosperity and capitalist bliss, the “heart” of Taipei, as represented by the apartments inhabited by most of the city’s population, is in ruin. Demolished buildings, construction debris, and industrial trash mar the landscape, and the family home is not only cramped and drab but also plagued by substandard plumbing. After calling in a repairman and knocking at the door of the upstairs flat assumed to be the source of the leak, Hsiao Kang’s father has so little hope of eliminating the problem that he scavenges for bits of discarded roofing and PVC pipe to redirect the water he sees as an unavoidable intrusion into his bedroom. As the water threatens to wash away the home, the dysfunctional family itself serves as a metaphor for a more general social crisis involving the decline of interpersonal communication, the atomization of the individual, the isolation of the nuclear family, the malaise associated with what Herbert Marcuse has called “repressive desublimation” of sexuality, and a host of other ills linked to the uncertainty of living in a contemporary metropolis like Taipei, or, more specifically, within a powerhouse economic entity like Taiwan that has next to no “official” political standing in the world polity. (Gina Marchetti)


Repressive desublimation is a cultural and sociological concept coined by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse in his 1964 book, One-Dimensional Man. It describes how advanced capitalist societies allow for the release of rebellious, taboo, or instinctual desires, but only by commercializing them, ultimately neutralizing their ability to challenge the status quo.

[ About file ]

Name: The River.1997.Ming-liang Tsai.BluRay.MELiTE.mkv
Date: Sun, 07 Jun 2026 13:38:31 +0200
Size: 8,529,649,892 bytes (8134.50803 MiB)

[ Magic ]

File type: Matroska data
File type: EBML file, creator matroska

[ Generic infos ]

Duration: 01:55:55 (6954.528 s)
Container: matroska
Production date: Tue, 09 Jun 2015 16:17:09 +0200
Total tracks: 3
Track nr. 1: video (V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC) {eng}
Track nr. 2: audio (A_AC3) {und}
Track nr. 3: subtitle (S_TEXT/UTF8) {eng}
Muxing library: libebml v1.2.2 + libmatroska v1.3.0
Writing application: mkvmerge v5.0.1 ('Es ist Sommer') built on Oct 9 2011 11:55:43

[ Relevant data ]

Resolution: 1920 x 1040
Width: multiple of 32
Height: multiple of 16
Average DRF: 21.947835
Standard deviation: 3.838515
Std. dev. weighted mean: 3.673564

[ Video track ]

Codec ID: V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Resolution: 1920 x 1040
Frame aspect ratio: 24:13 = 1.846154 (~1.85:1)
Pixel aspect ratio: 1:1 = 1
Display aspect ratio: 24:13 = 1.846154 (~1.85:1)
Framerate: 23.999981 fps
Content encoding:
order: 0
scope: all frames
type: compression
compression algorithm: header stripping
stripped header: 1 bytes
Stream size: 7,972,188,208 bytes (7602.87114 MiB)
Duration (bs): 01:55:54 (6954.46373 s)
Bitrate (bs): 9170.729497 kbps
Qf: 0.191363

[ Audio track ]

Codec ID: A_AC3
Sampling frequency: 48000 Hz
Channels: 2
Content encoding:
order: 0
scope: all frames
type: compression
compression algorithm: header stripping
stripped header: 2 bytes
Stream size: 556,362,240 bytes (530.588379 MiB)
Bitstream type (bs): AC3
Frames (bs): 217,329
Duration (bs): 01:55:55 (6954.528 s)
Chunk-aligned (bs): Yes
Bitrate (bs): 640 kbps CBR
Sampling frequency (bs): 48000 Hz
Mode (bs): stereo

[ Video bitstream ]

Bitstream type: MPEG-4 Part 10
User data: x264 | core 146 r2538 121396c | H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codec
User data: Copyleft 2003-2015 | http://www.videolan.org/x264.html | cabac=1
User data: ref=4 | deblock=1:0:0 | analyse=0x3:0x113 | me=umh | subme=7 | psy=1
User data: psy_rd=1.00:0.00 | mixed_ref=1 | me_range=16 | chroma_me=1
User data: trellis=1 | 8x8dct=1 | cqm=0 | deadzone=21,11 | fast_pskip=0
User data: chroma_qp_offset=-2 | threads=12 | lookahead_threads=2
User data: sliced_threads=0 | nr=0 | decimate=1 | interlaced=0
User data: bluray_compat=0 | constrained_intra=0 | bframes=3 | b_pyramid=2
User data: b_adapt=1 | b_bias=0 | direct=1 | weightb=1 | open_gop=0 | weightp=2
User data: keyint=250 | keyint_min=23 | scenecut=40 | intra_refresh=0
User data: rc_lookahead=40 | rc=2pass | mbtree=1 | bitrate=9174 | ratetol=1.0
User data: qcomp=0.60 | qpmin=0 | qpmax=69 | qpstep=4 | cplxblur=20.0
User data: qblur=0.5 | ip_ratio=1.40 | aq=1:1.00
SPS id: 0
Profile: [email protected]
Num ref frames: 4
Aspect ratio: Square pixels
Chroma format: YUV 4:2:0
PPS id: 0 (SPS: 0)
Entropy coding type: CABAC
Weighted prediction: P slices - explicit weighted prediction
Weighted bipred idc: B slices - implicit weighted prediction
8x8dct: Yes
Total frames: 166,907
Drop/delay frames: 0
Corrupt frames: 0

P-slices: 113275 ( 67.867 %) ##############
B-slices: 52045 ( 31.182 %) ######
I-slices: 1587 ( 0.951 %)
SP-slices: 0 ( 0.000 %)
SI-slices: 0 ( 0.000 %)

[ DRF analysis ]

average DRF: 21.96084
standard deviation: 3.84798
max DRF: 31

DRF=1: 19 ( 0.011 %)
DRF=2: 10 ( 0.006 %)
DRF=3: 53 ( 0.032 %)
DRF=4: 92 ( 0.055 %)
DRF=5: 89 ( 0.053 %)
DRF=6: 207 ( 0.124 %)
DRF=7: 308 ( 0.185 %)
DRF=8: 789 ( 0.473 %)
DRF=9: 1951 ( 1.169 %)
DRF=10: 1602 ( 0.960 %)
DRF=11: 1893 ( 1.134 %)
DRF=12: 163 ( 0.098 %)
DRF=13: 104 ( 0.062 %)
DRF=14: 210 ( 0.126 %)
DRF=15: 396 ( 0.237 %)
DRF=16: 920 ( 0.551 %)
DRF=17: 2045 ( 1.225 %)
DRF=18: 4209 ( 2.522 %) #
DRF=19: 10318 ( 6.182 %) #
DRF=20: 18044 ( 10.811 %) ##
DRF=21: 28180 ( 16.884 %) ###
DRF=22: 24541 ( 14.703 %) ###
DRF=23: 16608 ( 9.950 %) ##
DRF=24: 14366 ( 8.607 %) ##
DRF=25: 15767 ( 9.447 %) ##
DRF=26: 8468 ( 5.073 %) #
DRF=27: 7126 ( 4.269 %) #
DRF=28: 4274 ( 2.561 %) #
DRF=29: 2942 ( 1.763 %)
DRF=30: 1137 ( 0.681 %)
DRF=31: 53 ( 0.032 %)
DRF>31: 0 ( 0.000 %)

P-slices average DRF: 21.279373
P-slices std. deviation: 3.679923
P-slices max DRF: 31

B-slices average DRF: 23.548737
B-slices std. deviation: 3.707853
B-slices max DRF: 31

I-slices average DRF: 18.52741
I-slices std. deviation: 3.493586
I-slices max DRF: 27

[ DRF analysis (corrected) ]

End of start credits time position: 00:00:25 (25.333353 s) - ignored frames: 608

average DRF: 21.947835
standard deviation: 3.838515
max DRF: 31

DRF=1: 19 ( 0.011 %)
DRF=2: 10 ( 0.006 %)
DRF=3: 52 ( 0.031 %)
DRF=4: 91 ( 0.055 %)
DRF=5: 85 ( 0.051 %)
DRF=6: 207 ( 0.124 %)
DRF=7: 307 ( 0.185 %)
DRF=8: 788 ( 0.474 %)
DRF=9: 1946 ( 1.170 %)
DRF=10: 1590 ( 0.956 %)
DRF=11: 1893 ( 1.138 %)
DRF=12: 163 ( 0.098 %)
DRF=13: 104 ( 0.063 %)
DRF=14: 210 ( 0.126 %)
DRF=15: 394 ( 0.237 %)
DRF=16: 918 ( 0.552 %)
DRF=17: 2042 ( 1.228 %)
DRF=18: 4202 ( 2.527 %) #
DRF=19: 10315 ( 6.203 %) #
DRF=20: 18023 ( 10.838 %) ##
DRF=21: 28176 ( 16.943 %) ###
DRF=22: 24530 ( 14.751 %) ###
DRF=23: 16579 ( 9.969 %) ##
DRF=24: 14281 ( 8.588 %) ##
DRF=25: 15678 ( 9.428 %) ##
DRF=26: 8458 ( 5.086 %) #
DRF=27: 7073 ( 4.253 %) #
DRF=28: 4173 ( 2.509 %) #
DRF=29: 2867 ( 1.724 %)
DRF=30: 1049 ( 0.631 %)
DRF=31: 53 ( 0.032 %)
DRF>31: 0 ( 0.000 %)

P-slices average DRF: 21.256748
P-slices std. deviation: 3.664578
P-slices max DRF: 31

B-slices average DRF: 23.551849
B-slices std. deviation: 3.699911
B-slices max DRF: 31

I-slices average DRF: 18.531052
I-slices std. deviation: 3.448423
I-slices max DRF: 27

This report was created by AVInaptic (01-11-2020) on 7-06-2026 17:19:29