The fanfare that opens Goodbye, Dragon Inn is followed by a comedown crash. The prologue gives us a vision of the Fu-Ho in its heyday, but immediately afterwards we encounter a Fu-Ho that’s anything but Grand. It’s just another underpopulated declining urban theatre on the eve of a ‘Temporary Closing’, which one suspects management has optimistically identified as such in order to soften the blow of their establishment’s inevitable quiet passing, leaving behind no next of kin when it goes. A torrential rain – a regular presence in Tsai’s wringing-wet filmography – is lapping at the lobby, and there is a sense that the entire operation might soon be underwater. Après le cinéma, le déluge.