The year 2020 was a magical time for Taiwanese cinema. At a time when theatres around the world were shutting down because of the pandemic, the people of Taiwan were living in a kind of parallel universe, in which films were released as usual, film festivals and award ceremonies were still held, and domestic films achieved boxoffice success. This essay provides a summary of the development of Taiwanese cinema from 2020 to the Spring of 2021.
It mainly focuses on two auteur films that shone brightly at the 57th Golden Horse Awards, My Missing Valentine and Dear Tenant, as well as Gatao: The Last Stray and Man in Love, two mainstream commercial films that took over NT$100 million at the box office during the first quarter of 2021. Through in-depth analyses of these films, it is hoped that readers can gain an understanding of the current state of Taiwanese cinema.
Looking back on the development of the Taiwanese film market and domestic films in 2020, the most common interpretation is that it was influenced by the spread of Covid-19. Big Hollywood films retreated, enabling domestic films from Taiwan – where the pandemic was well-controlled – to flourish. Although there were no blockbuster phenomena like 2019’s Detention, which grossed NT$260 million at the domestic box office, when compared to 2019 Taiwanese films, the total number of Taiwanese films that broke NT$100 million at the box office in 2020 increased from one to two. The number of Taiwanese films that reached NT$30 million or more in box office takings rose from four to eleven.
It’s worth noting that the number of films with a total box office between NT$30 million and NT$50 million increased significantly, rising from just one in 2019 to six in 2020, and all of them were Golden Horse-nominated works. Such an improvement in both quality and quantity was partially due to “favorable timing.” As a result of major Hollywood films being delayed by the pandemic, Taiwanese films received better release schedules and were shown on more screens. The improvement was also attributable to “favourable geography,” as many Chinese films and major China-Hong Kong commercial co-productions gave up on applying to the 57th Golden Horse Awards due to political considerations.
Additionally, 2020 Taiwanese films were sufficiently diverse in subject matter, their overall standard had improved, and the large number of Golden Horse Award nominations they received generated a lot of buzz. Together with the “favourable human conditions” of the media effect and market demand, everything came together to produce this final result.
During Taiwanese cinema’s “Golden Horse Award wave” of late-2020, two films depicting the loneliness and social relations of “marginalised groups” captured many major awards. Directed by Chen Yu-hsun, My Missing Valentine portrays the heartwarming courtship between a girl who moves faster than other people and a boy who moves slower than other people. This light and humorous fantasy comedy was the biggest winner of the 2020 Golden Horse Awards, taking home five awards: best feature film, best director, best original screenplay, best visual effects, and best film editing.
In second place was Cheng Yu-chieh’s Dear Tenant, about a piano teacher who decides to look after the family of his deceased gay partner, only to find himself suspected of drug possession and murder. The film won a total of three Golden Horse Awards: best leading actor, best supporting actress, and best original film score.
Chen Yu-hsun first rose to prominence with 1995’s Tropical Fish, which uses a farcical kidnapping plot to explore the wealth gap between rich and poor that prevailed at the time. Due to the naivete of the characters and hilarity of the story, Chen became known as Taiwan’s most outstanding comedic director. As Taiwanese cinema was at a nadir at the time, Chen’s second feature film, 1997’s Love Go Go, did not perform well, so he switched to shooting commercials. It was not until 2010 that he came back to the film industry with the short film Another Juliet, the third segment of the three-part film Juliets.
After going through several ups and downs in recent years, experiencing box office success with Zone Pro Site and miserable failure with The Village of No Return, Chen returned to tell a melancholy story with improved humour and more delicate depictions of emotions.
My Missing Valentine has romantic elements, but is strictly speaking not a date movie. Though Chen is already over 50 years old, the way he views the world remains very innocent and pure. My Missing Valentine is a coming-of-age movie about two lonely souls in search of companionship. Such companionship has been a common theme of every one of Chen’s films from 1995 until now. Chen’s films never conceal his resentment towards Taipei or big cities, and his protagonists are typically oddballs with social phobias.
But the truth is that these oddballs are just like you and me and cannot be more ordinary. They may have various physical or psychological defects that lead to quite a lot of humorous situations, but Chen uses the least exploitative methods to place their ridiculousness, helplessness, innocence and awkwardness on a foundation of equality. That way, audiences can subtly develop complex emotions of empathy and wistfulness, while laughing at the same time. This is “comedy director” Chen Yu-hsun’s specific skill.
Coincidentally, Cheng Yu-chieh, whose works tend to be deeply critical and always confront social issues head-on, also exhibited an unexpected tenderness in Dear Tenant. Cheng first made his mark in 2006 with Do Over, a multi-narrative film that depicts five events involving 10 different characters over the span of 24 hours. His works usually touch on self-identity, family composition, blood relations, and nationalistic thinking.
Cheng does not only make feature-length films, and has achieved very good results with short films and TV series like the mini-series Days We Stared at the Sun (1 & 2), and the self-funded anti-nuclear short film (Un)Ordinary Happiness. Combing through Cheng’s more recent creations, it is obvious that he no longer chooses to pursue dazzling virtuosity, and has gone back to basics, turning to focus more on the relationship between people, the land, and the environment.
Dear Tenant is more than a good story. The performance of Mo Tzu-yi as the piano teacher and Chen Shu-fang as the mother of the gay partner dazzled audiences, and have been proclaimed Taiwanese cinema’s best acting performances of 2020. Moreover, the film broke away from the customary set-up of queer films, discussing topics like homosexual marriage, long-term care and non-blood-relative addiction to drugs and crime. Gay marriage was legalised in Taiwan on May 24, 2019, but the film is set in 2011. At that time, not many people discussed gay marriage and diversified families. Laws relating to Schedule II controlled drugs and designated adoption were all different to what they are now. So much has changed over time. By experiencing the gap between the changed and the unchanging, enlightenment can be gained.
The Golden Horse Awards concluded as 2020 was drawing to an end. Many questioned whether the brilliant results – or good fortune – of Taiwanese films over the year could be extended to the following year. Lunar New Year is typically a highly competitive battleground between Hollywood blockbusters and benchmark domestic films. With no major Hollywood films on the 2021 Lunar New Year release schedule, it was the gangster-themed Gatao: The Last Stray that stood out among six different Taiwanese films of different genres to become the only work to top NT$100 million at the box office.
Gangster films have a history of dominating Taiwan’s Lunar New Year schedule, from 2010’s Monga, 2013 and 2016’s David Loman films, and 2018’s Gatao 2: Rise of the King. It must be noted that the Gatao franchise currently has three films: Gatao and Gatao 2: Rise of the King, released three years apart, are from the main story, with some overlapping characters but independent storylines, while 2021’s Gatao: The Last Stray is a spin-off and prequel related to a key character from Gatao 2. The film is directed by Ray Jiang, a member of the core crew on the two previous entries.
In contrast to Gatao 2, which had ambitions to be the Taiwanese version of The Godfather, Gatao: The Last Stray does not have such a complicated plot of power transactions, nor does it have any thrilling fight scenes. Its biggest selling point is that it cuts into the male-dominated world of gangsters through a female character’s perspective, bringing out their anguish at feeling trapped in the criminal underworld.
In addition to shooting films, Ray Jiang has also made quite a few TV series that dive deep into the female psyche. For Gatao: The Last Stray, he created two flesh-and-blood female characters: one is a photographer who falls in love with a gangster, while the other is a filial daughter born into a gangster family. Jiang gave them more screen time than is usually given to female characters in traditional gangster films, allowing them to convey their inner struggles in a way that allows the audience to pity their emotional attempts to change when they are powerless to do so. This is not a film only about gangsters fighting and killing each other – it is a new-style gangster film that breaks free from gender stereotypes, contains romance, and emphasises a female perspective. Perhaps this is precisely why it was able to win out among the hotly contested field of Lunar New Year releases.
After Lunar New Year, we used to have to wait for the summer release schedule before the possibility of seeing another “box office phenomenon.” However, no one expected the sudden emergence of Man in Love in late March this year, a film which has already taken NT$400 million at the domestic box office, and is currently the sixth highest grossing Taiwanese domestic film of all time.
Out the top-five grossing Taiwanese domestic films, four are original works and the other is based on Taiwanese history. But Man in Love is a one-hundred-percent “outsider” because it is based on a 2014 South Korean film of the same English name. It tells the moving story of a hooligan who unexpectedly falls in love with his debt collection target, and decides to start over with her, taking a reckless risk that lands him in peril. The commercially oriented narrative earned the audience’s approval, as well as the synergies of the star cast and the film’s professional look. The film did a very good job of localising an imported story, and it resonated with audiences, enabling Taiwanese cinema to take a big step forward in its development into a mature industry.
Man in Love is the feature debut of new filmmaker Yin Chen-hao, a renowned music video director. The film’s producer, Cheng Wei-hao, decided to work with him because he admired the music video Yin had shot for the famous band EggPlantEgg. It is therefore no surprise, given Yin’s music video background, that he infused a rich musicality into Man in Love. Despite having a gangster theme, it is not another entry in the Gatao series. The real reason why Taiwanese audiences went crazy for this film is because Yin made the infatuated adoration of the gangster hooligan for the debt-owing, stone-cold beauty extremely sincere and moving, transforming an original work with typical Korean characters and Korean-style drama into a love story of life and death that takes place in a Taiwanese township.
Following on from Wei Te-sheng’s 2008 film, Cape No. 7, Yin stepped out of the icy urban jungle to create another Taiwanese township full of grassroots charm for the silver screen. It is a folksy and interesting world, where every character, regardless of good or bad, is vivid, lively, and suffused with warmth. Man in Love breaks the limitations of popular domestic films of the past, which always revolved around underworld gangs, school life, history, or comedies with local flavour. It is a composite genre – gangster spectacle, grassroot sentiments, romance, and it also made people laugh and cry. Simply put, it accurately demonstrates the elements that a good commercial film ought to have.
Ryan Cheng