The protagonists of Taiwan films released in 2007 included a self-hating lesbian Christian, an unhappy housewife whose only sexual pleasure comes from a bathtub full of expensive live eels, and a cleanliness-obsessed genetic scientist who pops experimental pills to help her overcome any natural resistance to her slobbish boyfriend. And that's just the women. 2007 was a promising year for Taiwan cinema at the box office. In 2007, 20 local features were released theatrically out of a total of 348. This represents a growth of 25% on 2006 when 16 local feature films opened, including 3 documentaries. 10 out of the 20 local features on release in Taipei crossed the long-standing psychological milestone of NT$1m (US$33,000) and 6 out of the 20 crossed NT$3m (US$100,000), which is rapidly becoming the new milestone for a successful local release in what has become a healthier distribution environment. Expectations were further raised because of three high-profile films due in the second half of the year: Jay Chou's fantasy romance Secret, Alexi Tan's gangster epic Blood Brothers and Ang Lee's wartime spy thriller Lust, Caution. The nationality of the three films was not clear-cut. Secret was directed by a Taiwan director with financing from Hong Kong; Blood Brothers was funded from Taiwan but had an overseas director; and Lust, Caution was financed from North America with a Taiwan-born director. 2007 got off to what promised to be a slow start with just five movies opening in the first six months, squeezed between Chinese New Year in February and the start of the ever-encroaching Hollywood summer in May. The three films released in March had a gay theme: Yao Hung-i's Reflections, Zero Chou's Spider Lilies and Tsai Ming-liang's Malaysia-shot I Don't Want to Sleep Alone. In April, Lin Yu-hsien's youth drama Exit No 6 and En Chen's road-movie-on-a-bicycle Island Etude opened. While the market share of the five films over the first half of 2007 was just 1.7%, they had an impressive average box office above US$130,000. While that figure is not sustainable in a modern film industry, it was the highest average box office in a decade. If one includes the US$4.5m box office of Lust, Caution, the market share of local films by the end of 2007 reached 7.3% in Taipei; without, it reached a respectable 2.3% thanks to Secret's haul of US$885,000. In comparison, market share in Taipei in 2006 was just 1.6%.
Not one, not two, but three local lesbian feature films opened in 2007 with just as many lined up for 2008. The highest profile of the three was Zero Chou's Spider Lilies which cast "princess of cute" local idol Rainie Yang in the leading role opposite Hong Kong's Isabella Leong. Film won the coveted Golden Teddy at the Berlin Film Festival for its imaginative approach to lesbian cinema that presented a "butch dyke" as indecisive but the "lipstick lesbian" as in control. Lilies is a big step up for director Zero Chou technically; she had previously directed stilted melodrama Splendid Float (2004) about a gay man who is a Taoist priest by day and a drag queen by night. Lilies is still problematic in its storytelling, but showed that Zero is prepared to adjust her vision to market conditions. Story set in Taipei is about an online pay-per-view video-cam girl and her obsession with a female tattoo artist who takes care of her mentally challenged brother following their father's sudden death in an earthquake. Lilies benefited from a swift release soon after its Berlin win scoring US$230,000 in Taipei. Yao Hung-i's Reflections had premiered at the Nantes Three Continents film festival in France in 2005 and at the International Film Festival Rotterdam in January 2006; it has yet to be released on DVD. Executive produced by Hou Hsiao-hsien with his regular cameraman Mark Lee and composer Lim Giong as support, the film which is as languid as its release schedule, is striking to look at and listen to but lacks a strong narrative drive. One of Taiwan's most "out-there" films of 2007 is the anti-lesbian Christian movie I Saw a Beast. Story starts with a film-within-a-film structure parodying landmark gay romantic comedy Formula 17 (2004) in which two naked women swim and kiss underwater. Movie then cuts to a question-and-answer session with the heterosexual male director who is lambasted by the real film's female protagonist for exploiting lesbians. While director Chou is "out" as a lesbian, most other recent lesbian films are indeed directed by heterosexual men. I Saw A Beast is part of a trend for religious films following the success of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, which scored US$1m in Taipei in 2004 as church groups organised busloads of the faithful. Other examples in 2007 included Lin Shih-jen's Buddhist animation Mazu and Daven Hsu's earnest father-and-son Christian melodrama I Wish. All three flopped at the box office with only Mazu scraping past the US$33,000 (NT$1m) mark on a ten screen release with backing from CMC Entertainment as the film's distributor. Lesbian films already completed in 2008 include Zero Chou's three-part Drifting Flowers, Chen Hung-i's four-part Candy Rain and Cheng Hsiao-tse's Miao Miao. Despite its small-scale, shot on HD with a limited budget from a local television station, Flowers is Chou's most accomplished film yet, focusing on three generations of lesbians. Rain is distinguished by how it captures the modern city of Taipei with a cast including Karena Lam and pop singer Cyndi Wang. Germany's Monika Treut is currently shooting a lesbian drama in Hamburg and Taipei tentatively titled In Between.
With most filmgoers aged in their teens and early twenties, it's natural for Taiwan filmmakers to target this market with youth drama. The most successful example of the genre in 2007 was Jay Chou's Secret. Born in Taipei City in January 1979, Chou is a successful and talented singer-songwriter who became a movie star after roles in Andrew Lau's Initial D (2005) and Zhang Yimou's Curse of the Golden Flower (2006). He currently ranks alongside Ge You as the most bankable movie star in China. Secret is a fantastical romance across time that stands out from the naturalistic youth drama that Taiwan is best known for. Backed by Hong Kong producer Bill Kong, the US$2.5m film made $3.7m alone in its first ten days on release in China, and over US$1m during the same time period in Hong Kong. While film has yet to sell to Japan, it has helped raise Chou's profile in South Korea where the film hang in just below the top ten for several weeks for a final box office total over US$0.5m. One of the strongest points of Secret is it's clear love of music in the story of a gifted pianist who enters a new school where he is bewitched by a mysterious girl. While other Asian films about music haven't had faith in their own soundtracks - notably Itthi-sunthorn Wichailak's tale of 19th century xylophone players The Overture (2003) which relied on visual reaction shots - Chou's clear love of music is at the forefront in both an exciting piano-playing competitive showdown and a special effect-laden finalé. Film has helped boost the acting career of Guey Lun-mei, still best remembered for her debut role in Yee Chih-yen's Blue Gate Crossing (2002), and newcomer Alice Tseng. Guey, who has been stranded in lacklustre Taiwan art house movies, is now acting in Tsui Hark's big-budget romantic comedy She Ain't Mean opposite mainland China's Zhou Xun and Kitty Zhang while Tseng has a prominent role in Patrick Kong's Hong Kong box office hit L For Love, L for Lies and headlines recent television drama Pretty Ugly. Another new release kicking against the trend of naturalistic (and nihilistic) youth drama was Lin Yu-hsien's Exit No. 6 which created a fantasy world around Taipei's teen mecca of Hsimenting. The film is named after the subway exit that faces the pedestrianised entrance. This first narrative feature by Lin, who previously won box office and awards recognition for his documentary on boy gymnasts Jump! Boys, was backed by first-time producer Roger Huang who had worked as a production manager on Sylvia Chang's 20 30 40 and other high-profile Taiwan shoots. While Exit No 6 is clearly a sincere production, director Lin (b.1974) is probably too old to capture the zeitgeist of contemporary Hsimenting where even twenty-somethings feel out of place. The film is the most "Japanese" movie from Taiwan since Su Chao-pin's Better Than Sex (2001) with clear references to Yukisada Isao's Go, Otani Kentaro's Nana and Sono Sion's Suicide Club. Lin is currently in pre-production on two features, a homage to romance movies called Flame By Frame and the sports drama Somersault Punk.
For a small island, Taiwan has more than its fair share of road movies. Part of the reason is the dominant government's production subsidy system which may encourage submissions that promote tourism from savvy producers. Lin Ching-chieh's clumsily titled The Most Distant Course stars Guey Lun-mei as a young woman retraces the footsteps of a sound recordist played by Morning Mo along Taiwan's picturesque east coast. Mo has sent a series of audio tapes capturing the natural sounds of Taiwan to an ex-girlfriend that have mistakenly been delivered to broken-hearted Guey. Although Distant was shot before Secret, distributor released it after Jay Chou's box office hit so as to benefit from renewed interest in actress Guey, keeping her center stage in images promoting the film. This smart move took the film to over US$100,000 at the Taipei box office; it also secured a Hong Kong release through Secret's co-producer Edko in Hong Kong. The project had secured US$150,000 in financing from the Taiwan government in 2002 but director Lin was forced to return the money when he had creative differences with original producer Tsai Ming-liang. Another road movie to appeal to local audiences was En Chen's Island Etude. Debut director Chen (b. 1959) was cameraman and assistant director on several Hou Hsiao-hsien features and has also served as art director and composer on various productions. The story is about a deaf young man who goes on a seven-day bicycle journey around the island of Taipei beginning in subsidy-friendly Kaohsiung City. The film received marketing support from Warner Brothers that helped grow the film to an astonishing US$300,000 at the Taipei box office on a modest six-screen release.
Taiwan's production subsidies also attracted Hong Kong producers in 2007. Examples include Cheng Wen-tang's Summer's Tail and Tom Lin's recently completed Winds Of September. The former was supported by Tsui Siu-ming's Sundream Motion Pictures who secured international rights to the film for a modest investment of 25%. The latter was co-financed by Eric Tsang as part of a three-film project that also includes episode from young directors in Hong Kong and China that share a similar story but have localised scripts. Summer's Tail fails to create its own world, owing a clear creative debt to Iwai Shunji's All About Lily Chou-chou (2001) and Leste Chen's Eternal Summer (2006). The film stars the latter's award-winning Bryant Chang as a student in emotional turmoil after the end of an affair with his attractive teacher played by Christine Ke. In the editing room, Cheng shifted the focus to his own guitar-playing daughter Enno (credited as scripts co-writer under her real name Cheng Yi-nung) who is musically gifted but less captivating than Chang and co-stars Dean Fujioka and Hannah Lin. Winds of September doesn't hide its debt to Edward Yang in its story of seven high-school boys in the city of Hsinchu in 1996, set against the backdrop of a baseball scandal that marked the end of their innocence. Lin's second feature film, after his 70-minute Parachute Kids (2002) about Taiwan teenagers who land in California and drift into teenage gangs, should help launch the careers of the film's male leads. The film's grasping for greater truths is at the expense of its earlier, more intimate moments, and this turns it into something more conventional. Announced as the most expensive feature ever financed from Taiwan, Alexi Tan's US$10m Blood Brothers was the second recent big production from CMC Entertainment. CMC, a vertically integrated entertainment company with interests in theatrical distribution, home video distribution, home video rental and talent management, returned to production with high-concept ghost thriller Silk in 2006. While Silk's supernatural story kept it out of China, Blood Brothers was an official co-production through Sil-Metropole Organization. Brothers' tale of three male friends from the countryside who come to the big city, get corrupted and fall out is inspired by producer John Woo's Bullet in the Head but is also a familiar story that is much more cinematically told in Kongkait Komesiri's Thai action melodrama Muay Thai Chaiya (playing in this year's festival). The exuberant acting of Chinese cast members Liu Ye and Sun Honglei - one of the film's few pleasures - felt out of place in the restrained feature that lacked the exciting set pieces one expects from a Woo production. Despite a star cast that included Daniel Wu, Chang Chen and Shu Qi, Brothers was a resounding flop. The film's disastrous opening in Hong Kong, where it fell out of the top ten in its initial weekend despite a 20-screen release, reflects the territory's resistance to commercial cinema from Taiwan. Silk and Double Vision also underperformed in Hong Kong where the industry and audiences prefer to see Taiwan as a production factory for small arthouse films and gay cinema. CMC has co-financed John Woo's Battle of Red Cliff and Chen Kaige's Mei Lanfang, both due out in 2008. Three Dots Entertainment failed to secure Hong Kong distribution for their romantic comedy My DNA Says I Love You, the second feature from female director Robin Lee. The film likely turned a profit on theatrical distribution in China, Taiwan and Singapore. After initially considering a Singapore shoot, the company's first China co-production was shot entirely in the southern city of Xiamen. The city, famed for its cleanliness, made a fresh backdrop for the high-concept romance about two genetic scientists who use the latest technologies to secure true love. DNA secured a Best Newcomer nomination for actor Eddie Peng at the Golden Horse Film Awards for a role in which he pursued mainland actress Yu Nan, an Udine guest in 2000 with Lunar Eclipse. While she didn't secure any nominations, actress Terri Kwan, an Udine guest in 2006 with The Heirloom, shined in the role of a scatterbrained pill-popping scientist. Kwan, previously took a Golden Horse Best Supporting Actress trophy for another comedic role in Johnnie To and Wai Ka-fai's Turn Left, Turn Right, clearly her forte. News of the death of Edward Yang on 30 June 2007 swept across the local media even though it has been ten years since one of his films had played movie theaters in Taiwan. His final feature, A One And A Two (2000), was never sold to Taiwan due to an unrealistic asking price from the film's Japanese investors but also in no small part because Yang was reluctant to see the film released in a market that he felt increasingly alienated from. He saw the government's involvement in local film production as a negative force and didn't wish to be one of their pawns. The only film from an "auteur" director to receive a theatrical release in 2007 was Tsai Ming-liang's I Don't Want To Sleep Alone. The small release on just two screens in Taipei just fell short of the US$33,000 (NT$1m) milestone that marks a moderately successful local release. While critics praised the film as Tsai's most tender work to date, film in which a man cares for a stranger that he finds unconscious on the street reveals a darker take on human nature when the carer pulls a knife on the stranger after he's refused gay sex. The film is Tsai's first film shot in Malaysia, his native country. Lee Kang-sheng's Help Me Eros performed a little better with US$48,000 in Taipei on a seven-screen release in January 2008 with the marketing support of 20th Century Fox. Produced by Tsai Ming-liang, it showed Lee's inability to break free from his mentor's shadow although there are signs that he is more intent on communicating with his audience. The film bears similarities to Tsai's biggest hit The Wayward Cloud, with its energetic sex, exuberant production design and uncomfortable ridiculing of overweight women. Auteurs returning to the big screen included Chang Tso-chi and Yee Chih-yen. Chang's Soul of a Demon is his first completed feature film in five years. Story of a gangster in a fishing village has received festival screenings but may not get a domestic theatrical release. Yee Chih-yen, whose last feature was Blue Gate Crossing in 2002, is in pre-production on historical drama Café Astoria after his Eileen Chang adaptation Love In A Fallen City was abandoned. Astoria, which will be shot primarily in Shanghai, with additional scenes in Hong Kong and Taipei, is expected in 2009. Hou Hsiao-hsien is still raising finance for his martial arts epic The Assassin, about 8th century female hit woman Nie Yinniang for which he received a US$500,000 government subsidy in December 2005. The live action feature is reputed to be closer in style to Miyazaki Hayao than the recent generation of epics from China and Hong Kong. The project has been planned by Hou and his scriptwriter Chu Tien-wen for at least fifteen years, and is exciting for its depiction of a female protagonist who puts personal freedoms before honor and duty.
Stephen Cremin