本文以一部實驗影片《台北四非》（2006年）和兩部劇情片《徵婚啟事》（1998年）、《愛情來了》（1997年）為主要文本，討論影片或影片的角色如何面對台北的流動空間以及是否利用流動的符號以及溝通的儀式與媒介產生意義或溝通。在台北這個人口稠密、時空壓縮的後現代都市空間中，人與人的接觸不但頻繁、短暫，而且往往是透過種種媒介而解體（disembodied非面對面的）的。本文討論的三部影片（或其角色）都有透過多種傳輸媒介（如︰車輛、手機、飛機、電話、報紙、電視、攝影機）和儀式（如︰徵婚、唱歌、被訪問）溝通或被監視，而這些媒介與儀式將人們置放於流動網絡中，或甚至他們的私人空間也被流動化。我分析這三部影片中人與符號的流動和再脈絡化，主張三部影片都能夠捕捉都市的流動而產生意義。所謂「（再）脈絡化」有兩層含意：社會脈絡化──兩部劇情片中孤離的角色透過儀式或媒介溝通可以彼此產生共鳴，和文本脈絡化──實驗影片將台北流動影像美學化處理以產生文本意義。至於《台北四非》──以及台灣電影整體──的社會脈絡意義則端視你我觀眾的回應。

With three recent Taiwanese films--Love Go Go[1997], The Personals [1998], and Taipei Four Ways [2006]—as examples, I analyze how recent Taipei films (as part of the so-called New New Taiwan Cinema), while capturing and responding to Taipei’s ever-increasing speed of flows in comic, self-reflexive and/or collage styles, produce meanings through mediated communication among the characters’ and recontexutalization of signs. In the densely populated and time-space compressed Taipei, human contact is frequent but transient, and communication mediated and disembodied. The three city films foreground the roles of media (e.g. car, cell phone, airplane, newspaper, TV and film camera) and rituals (e.g. singing and interview) in human communication, transportation and surveillance. Such media and rituals can set people and their messages adrift in the spaces of flows, while the flows of messages can penetrate even their private spaces. These flows of signs and people, however, do not deny the possibility of communication and recontextualization. I see in the three films respectively two types of recontextualization: aesthetic and social recontexutalization. Taipei Four Ways has the city signs and interviewee’s words taken out of context to produce visual patterning of flows and orchestration of words and sounds, which, in turn, serve as some collective comments on Taipei. Another form of recontextualization—communication among social subjects—happens in the two feature films, which show urban migrants, either isolated in their small apartments, or drifting in transitory and segmental relations in various urban spaces of flows, still seek to communicate through rituals and/or other forms of communication media. Although some communication can be hurting and even oppressive, the two films use such mediated communication as a way for the characters to seize the flows and make it “home.”