Love and Horror: Taiwanese Films in 2015

 

The Wonderful Wedding’s selling point was the well-known comedian Chu Ko-liang. But the film was conceived in cooperation with mainland China and the plot, propelled by Chu’s humorous style plus a dose of sentimentalism, reflects the contradictions of a marriage marked by cultural differences. Launched during the Spring Festival in Taiwan, the film grossed more than €65 million, confirming Chu Ko-liang as one of the undisputed stars of local cinema. But in China, it received a colder reception just two weeks later, netting a paltry €100,000. 

 

A failure that, aside from timing-related issues, may be due to Chu’s inability to thrill Chinese crowds. Conversely Our Times, also released in the Greater China area, took advantage of all the elements that characterised You Are the Apple of My Eye, and grossed more than €100 million locally. It became the most successful Taiwanese film to screen in China, with a box-office take five times higher than its Taiwan gross. The film did well in Hong Kong and Singapore, taking €500,000 and € 300,000 respectively. 

 

Our Times is another teenage film that, like You Are the Apple of My Eye and Café. Waiting. Love, achieved an excellent reaction from audiences. The former, written and directed by Giddens Ko and produced by Angie Chai, opened the way for high-school themed films, while the latter established the production team as a group to watch. The last of the series, which continues to ply the genre’s leitmotivs, proves audiences’ love of teenage romantic comedies. 

 

Our Times, directed by Frankie Chen and featuring Vivian Sung and Darren Wang, seems to fall halfway between a female version of You Are the Apple of My Eye and the Thai movie First Love. Narrated in flashbacks, it’s a classic love triangle between an innocent girl, a handsome student, and a bad boy. Andy Lau, looking beautiful and iconic in a cameo, widens the audience appeal by representing teenagers from bygone times. The film had added nostalgia of the Nineties, thanks to a soundtrack by Grasshopper, Feng Fei-fei, and Andy Lau himself. Frankie Chen debuted in television, creating idol dramas like You’re My Destiny, My Queen and the Chinese-produced Prince of Lan Ling. Her unique point of view, confirmed by excellent television ratings, has allowed her to work with the newly established Hualien Media. 

 

According to producer Yeh Jufeng, the company chose to make the film because it transposed the male perspective of Winds of September and You Are the Apple of My Eye to a female. Chen was involved in the original concept and the script, so Yeh, the “godmother of idol dramas,” recommended that she took care of every aspect of the movie. But due to its resemblance to a TV series, several changes had to be made to create a more filmic style. 

 

A careful job in pre-production ensured the strong market insight of the director reached the screen. Chen perfectly manages the development of the narrative, with the expert hand of Yeh guaranteeing the overall quality of the work. Apart from cameos by Andy Lau and Jerry Yan, Our Times has no big actors, but this did not prevent Vivian Sung increasing her profile after her partial success in Café. Waiting. Love. 

 

Her character Truly (whose name in Chinese literally means “true heart”) was loved by the public, and she was nominated for a Golden Horse Award. The “beautiful rebel” Darren Wang, seven years after his debut, has also been experiencing renewed popularity. Before Cape No. 7, horror films like Double Vision, Silk and The Heirloom had sporadically refreshed the depressed Taiwanese market. 

 

But 2015 proved to be a year of rebirth for horror. Films included The Laundryman, The Bride and The Tag- Along. It’s worth noting that the last two, although imitating more famous foreign productions (Japanese and Thai in particular), are works by first-time directors inspired by local stories. The Bride, directed by Lingo Hsieh and produced by Ichise Takashige (the creator of The Ring and Ju-On: The Grudge), builds on Taiwanese rituals and superstitions such as the “posthumous marriage” and the prohibition to pick up “red envelopes” from the ground. (Red envelopes are used to give money to newlyweds, and when they are found on the street some people believe they may belong to ghosts.) 

 

This represents an experiment with the genre. The production team was mostly made up of new recruits, and while it reminded of Japanese, Thai, and American horror films, it sought innovation in its editing and camera movement. The Bride grossed over €250,000 in its first week, confirming the potential of local horror productions. 

 

The Tag-Along, directed by Cheng Weihao (aka Vic Cheng), found inspiration in an inexplicable 1998 Taiwanese amateur video, which showed a woman in a red dress. Featuring Tiffany Hsu and River Huang, and post-produced by the team behind the Thai films Pee Mak and I Miss U, it is a blatant attempt to conquer the film market by applying the horror genre to a supernatural media event. 

 

The mystery of the girl dressed in red is cleverly mixed with local folklore. It introduces the evil spirit Mosien, no longer the usual monster looking for revenge or killing intruders, but rather a character skillfully connected to everyday folklore, in order to scare the viewers. It took more than €800,000 in its first week, finally grossing over two million euros. 

 

River Huang stars as a real estate agent who lives with his grandmother. One day the old woman disappears. While scrolling through the photos on her camera, he sees a travel video in which a strange little girl dressed in red is following the old woman. Strange things start happening. 

 

After filming some experimental shorts, Cheng Wei-hao made his debut with this horror movie. Although he follows the tropes of the genre, he creates a strange hybrid of a ghost and an evil goblin, while building on the legend of the Taiwanese mosien. This is a creature that draws people into the woods, causing confusion and weird behaviour such as eating insects. It’s a creature that feeds on the weaknesses and the collective neurosis of our society. 

 

The uniqueness of the mosien is that it manages to break the rules, evoking our sense of awe towards nature and the demons of selfishness and remorse. The irrational chaos reigning in the world is nothing but the re-emergence of problems that were buried for too long. Different attitudes toward marriage and family, the fear of being excluded by society, and even the destruction of the environment caused by exploitation of the soil, are all factors that lead the mosien into an otherwise ordinary life. 

 

River Huang and Tiffany Hsu are emerging stars in the Taiwanese film scene. The latter, after debuting as a model, gradually moved from TV to the big screen, and gave an outstanding performance. She brings depth to the entire film by means of varied expressions ranging from sweetness to terror, from fragility to perseverance. Because of limitations in quantity and economic investment, the Taiwanese film industry is unable to crank-out market- oriented genre movies. But it seems that these attempts succeeded in gaining a share of the market by exploiting the selling points of Hollywood films, and other foreign films. 

 

Our Times, The Bride, The Tag-Along and even Lee Chung’s The Laundryman, all highlight an effort to enter specific film genres. Produced by Lee Lieh and directed by Lee Chung, The Laundryman is an action- thriller-black comedy like Sweet Alibis (Lien Yi-chi, 2014). But it’s unique, since the director presents a murderer persecuted by the souls of his victims. Because of the emotional detachment that characterises the picture, it met with a slack response at the box office, even though it’s a first-class production starring big names like Chang Hsiao-chuan and Sui Tang. It’s worth mentioning that out of the top 10 grossing Taiwanese films of 2015, three are romances: Go LaLa Go, The Last Woman Standing and Another Woman. 

 

The first two come from a collaboration with the mainland (that is, Taiwanese actors and Chinese crew). The protagonists Ariel Lin and Shu Qi, who play two experienced women struggling with complicated marital matters, increase the film’s appeal to a female audience. Although the reception was cooler in China, they are an important reference for the future development of the genre. 

 

The undisputed success of Our Times proves the Taiwanese public’s preference for young romantic comedies, but this should not devalue the work of producers like Yeh Jufeng, Lee Lieh, and Angie Chai, who continue strive for artistic achievements. After the success of Zone Pro Site: The Moveable Feast (2013), Yeh returned to join forces with director Chen Yu-hsun for Jian Wang Cun, a fantasy-action comedy set in ancient China. 

 

The film, starring Shu Qi as the main character, is currently shooting and should be out next spring in Greater China. Angie Chai, besides working with Adam Tsuei for the adaptation of Giddens Ko’s thriller-fantasy novel The Tenants Downstairs, is producing the school-bullying themed Mon mon mon MONSTERS, also by Giddens. This experiments contribute to the diversity of contemporary cinema in Taiwan.