Domesticating Time: Gendered Temporalities in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Café Lumière

Abstract

This article utilizes the trope of domesticity/domestication in order to explore notions of gendered temporality in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Café Lumière (2003). In dialogue with the Chinese writer Eileen Chang and Western theories about women’s time and domestic temporality, the article proposes that the works of both Hou and Chang can be described as instances of écriture féminine that interrogate an ambivalence toward domesticity. Drawing on Chantal Akerman’s film in contrast to that of Hou, the article further demonstrates how the use of the cinematographic long take domesticates time and space, as well as the ways in which the horror of everyday domesticity have been captured through what Rey Chow calls “feminine details.” Finally, the present article argues that Café Lumière domesticates a fear of domesticity and pregnancy through a reconfiguration of linear and cyclical time, a reversal of gender roles in its protagonists, and a privileging of aurality over visuality in its cinematic style, such that it presents the potential for a new kind of union and a new kind of futurity premised upon reordered gendered forms of temporality.

Keywords

Eileen Chang / Hou Hsiao-hsien / domesticity/domestication / time/temporality / gender / écriture feminine / aurality / Café Lumière

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Brill