Lee Kang-sheg plays a projectionist in Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang's latest film, Goodbye, Dragon Inn, a homage of sorts to King Hu's 1966 martial arts masterpiece, Dragon Inn.

In numerous interviews, Taiwanese filmmaker Tsaí Ming-liang has described how he has overcome his own temptations to use narrative and any pressures from producers to make marketplace-friendly films. Tsaí's pledge of cool independence and artistic verve colors his latest masterpiece, Good Bye, Dragon Inn, a poetic drama set in a nearly empty Taipei cinema playing director King Hu's 1966 martial arts masterpiece, Dragon Inn.

The images and dialogue from Dragon Inn spill off the screen and interact with the theater's workers (Lee Kang-sheng, a regular in Tsaí's films, plays the projectionist), its few customers and phantoms who pass through the dark auditorium.

The two heroes of Hu's film -- Miao Tian and Shi Jun -- appear as elderly spectators in the cinema, and they are the perfect messengers for a cinematic goodbye to a past era of Asian cinema as they watch themselves fight on-screen.

Water remains Tsaí's visual metaphor of choice. Flooded apartments played a major role in his debut film about Taipei teens, Rebels of the Neon God (1992). Much of the drama of his erotic Vive L'Amour (1994) takes place in a plush, tiled bath. The polluted Tanshui is key to his family drama, The River (1997), and a constant monsoon provides an atmospheric backdrop to his musical fantasy, The Hole (1998). A fish tank is key in his previous film, What Time Is It There? (2001).

In Good Bye, Dragon Inn, the rain pours down around the Taipei cinema and fills the numerous buckets placed under the holes in its roof. It's the perfect backdrop for a story about decay, loss and longing for the past.

Tsaí was born in rural Malaysia and separated from his grandparents to move to Taiwan to study film in 1977. His homosexuality and skill for melodramatic love stories -- especially The River and Vive L'Amour -- have invited comparisons to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, but Tsaí leans toward the subtle and dreamlike with Good Bye, Dragon Inn.

He is an expert observer of the human heart and there is no doubting the sorrow throughout the theater's aisles. Good Bye, Dragon Inn is less nihilistic and less erotic than his previous films but every bit as powerful and nervy in its use of silence and long, extended takes. The Taipei apartment blocks of Tsaí's previous films share much in common with the rundown cinema of Good Bye, Dragon Inn. They are vessels of longing and unattainable dreams of happiness.

By the time the woman worker leaves the theater, holding her umbrella against the incessant rainstorm, you remain immersed in Tsaí's dream state. One thing remains true: When it comes to capturing the sadness, loneliness and emptiness of life in a materialistic modern urban world, nobody betters Tsaí. Good Bye, Dragon Inn grade: A