Although 2017 continued a negative trend for Taiwanese cinema at the box office, variety and creativity flourished, particularly in the second half of the year. New releases such as The Great Buddha+, The Bold, the Corrupt and the Beautiful, and On Happiness Road covered a wider range of styles and genres, and dived deeper into the historical, social and political issues of the island.
All Taiwanese films yielded disappointing box office results during Lunar New Year. The failure of Hanky Panky caused superstar Chu Ko-Liang to lose popularity, 52Hz, I Love You by Wei Te-Sheng was met with a cold reception, and even the huge cross-strait production The Village of No Return took only one-tenth of the 300 million NT$ spent to produce it in Taiwan. Chen Yu-Hsun’s Zone Pro Site had an even weaker box-office performance. Nevertheless, there were attempts at innovation in The Village of No Return, a comedy that winks ironically at old costume action films, and also in 52Hz, I Love You, a rare musical that attempted to attract fans of TV programmes.
Who Killed Cock Robin and The Tag-Along 2 were both directed by the young Cheng Wei-Hao, who in recent years has proved to be the most skilled filmmaker working in genre films with a limited budget. The first is a fast-paced investigative thriller, focusing on an inexplicable traffic accident. The Tag-Along 2 continues to build on the popular legends and religious taboos related to the Moo-sin, the spirit from the first episode. The movie established itself as a kind of Taiwanese horror intellectual property. It was more successful than its predecessor, and made audiences look forward to the third part of this “red demon trilogy.”
Mon Mon Mon Monsters by Giddens Ko belongs in the same vein as The Tag-Along 2. It’s a summer movie full of weird atmosphere and dreadful spirits, created with plenty of special effects. It’s about school violence, a subject that would not usually find favour with the Taiwanese public, who traditionally prefer romantic dramas. But that did not prevent Kent Tsai, the film’s wicked bully, from becoming the hottest new Taiwanese actor in films and TV last year.
Appearing in last spring’s television drama The Teenage Psychic, the summer movie Mon Mon Mon Monsters, and All Because of Love, 20-year-old Tsai has impressed everywhere. His multifaceted characters, including a good guy, a tough bully, and a naive loser, helped him win a nomination at the Golden Horse Awards as best new actor for his role in All Because of Love.
All Because of Love is the second Taiwanese feature directed by Lien Yi-Chi (Sweet Alibis). Tsai plays a high-school student who is more interested in pretty girls than studying. After his graduation, the boy returns to his native Penghu, where the search for his origins changes his perspective on love. Overflowing with youthful cheerfulness, the film is a successful combination of wild imagination, family introspection, and local humour.
Lien Yi-Chi loves using genre films to try new artistic paths. After analysing love in the thriller Sweet Alibis, which featured a lot of black humour, Lien used a hyperbolic, almost comic style to explain the power of simple straightforward feelings. Aesthetically, it’s based on Trainspotting-like stylised images, and Lien utilises a clever soundtrack of old songs to make the plot feel like it’s progressing like a music video.
Wei Te-Sheng’s Cape No. 7 triumphed at the box office because of its funny but inspiring plot 10 years ago, and these two elements continue to define contemporary Taiwanese cinema. Turn Around, by Chen Da-Pu, focused on reconstruction work after the earthquake of 21 September 1999, and pictured the ensuing transformation of education in rural areas. It’s about a young teacher who helps students to recover from the trauma of the event, and to develop self-confidence. Its structure and narrative style are under-developed, but the use of Taiwanese humour, and the attempt to engage the public with a story based on facts, are to be applauded.
The Great Buddha+, written and directed by Huang Hsin-Yao, is another typical Taiwanese production, full of energy and strong language. But at the same time, it completely subverts the traditional joyfulness and positive mood of Taiwanese films, instead unspooling as a kind of black comedy that’s partially shot in black and white. After winning five awards at the Taipei Film Awards, including the NT$ 5 million first prize, Buddha repeated its success at the Golden Horse Awards, where it took five more prizes, including best new director, and consequently doubled its takings at the box office.
Buddha is adapted from Huang’s short film Da Fo and adheres to its structure. It’s about the adventures of two middle-aged men, a recyclable-material collector and a night-watchman at a factory making statues of Buddha. They peek at the factory owner’s dash cam footage, and become entangled in a web of dark secrets. Under the supervision of producer and cinematographer Chung Mong-Hong, technical aspects proved to be impressive. The film, which has many jokes in the Taiwanese dialect, deals with profound subjects with a light touch, and pointedly criticises politics and society.
During last year’s Golden Horse Awards, the fiercest competitor to Buddha was The Bold, the Corrupt and the Beautiful by director Yang Ya-Che. The film won awards for best picture, best actress, and best supporting actress. As in Yang’s earlier GF & BF, the director uses the medium of visual storytelling to lash out against the frequent scandals in politics and economics in Taiwan. The latest film points its finger at the corrupt ties between politics and finance, describing dishonesty and deception with an extremely realistic approach.
The Bold, the Corrupt and the Beautiful takes us back about 30 years. Kara Hui portrays the widow of a general, who officially works as an antiques dealer, while she recycles dirty money under the counter on behalf of businessmen and politicians. She builds a network of illegal trades, and ends up involving her two daughters, Wu Ke-Xi and Vicky Chen, in her “family business”. Yang Ya-Che uses a female perspective to present a male-dominated political-economic environment, and the film is a modern satire with a vintage flavour.
The most popular theme in recent Taiwanese cinema has been youthful innocence mixed with nostalgia, and Hsieh Chun-Yi’s Take me to the Moon, while not deviating from this model, makes use of an unusual retrospective point of view. The viewer immediately sees the epilogue and then watches reconstructions of what went before, as the characters recall their old dreams. The extensive use of Chang Yu-Sheng’s songs also acts as a tribute to the pop music of the 1990s.
Hsieh Chun-Yi appeared at Udine’s Far East Film Festival with Apolitical Romance, which told about a boy who helps a woman to fulfill her wishes. In Take me to the Moon he introduces us to a young man who is transported 20 years back in time, on the eve of his high-school graduation. He tries to prevent a girl from pursuing her dreams to avoid the problems he knows will occur in the future. But 20 years later he realises that passion is the motivation that drives young people to move forward. Singer Vivian Sung plays a fan of Chang Yu-Sheng, who is committed to pursuing a musical career.
On Happiness Road is a 2-D animated film written and directed by Sung Hsin-Yin, based on a story created by the author over a decade ago, when she took scriptwriting lessons in the United States. It’s the story of an era filtered through the eyes of a Taiwanese girl passing from infancy to adulthood. After returning to Taiwan, Sung wanted to make it into a live action film, but her friends suggested she create an animated short instead. The result was immediately rewarded at the Taipei Film Awards. It was then readapted into a feature animated film, helped by a million NT$ assigned by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Project Promotion project. That is how Sung started a new adventure in unexplored territory.
On Happiness Road is a slightly autobiographical production, so it’s not difficult to notice the ambition of this young director. The protagonist Chi, born with a quarter of Aboriginal blood on the day of General Chiang Kai-shek’s death, has a friend of Taiwanese-American descent. Growing up right after the end of the political control during the martial law period, she witnesses the social movements and the economic boom at the end of the regime, then goes to the United States, where she studies and starts a family. But she still misses her homeland. A microcosm of an era, the girl’s personal history covers almost 40 years of Taiwanese historical and social development, and recalls the collective memory of the island. The atmosphere of fantasy frees-up the narration, and it also highlights the absurdity of the real world. Voiceover artists include Kwei Lun-Mei and director Wei-Te Sheng.
Since 2015, Hollywood blockbusters like Kingsman, Deadpool and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter have dominated cinemas during the Lunar New Year. This year the main player was Marvel’s Black Panther, but local films stood their ground, thanks to Back to the Good Times and GATAO 2-The New Leader Rising.
Back to the Good Times was based on the TV drama A Boy Named Flora, and is the second feature by director Chu Yu-Ning, arriving five years after To My Dear Granny. Unlike the latter, it’s is made for a wider public. It’s full of Taiwanese-style liveliness, and it capitalises on the growing success of the TV series. A Boy Named Flora was one of the most successful television programs in Taiwan last year, with the last episode taking a 4.16 per cent share of viewers.
GATAO 2 follows its prequel as a film about criminal groups that fight for their territory. But there is a new team and some original content. Yen Cheng-Kuo, who had only a small part in the first episode, has now moved into the director’s seat. After playing the role of the naughty boy during the new era of Taiwanese cinema and the fighter in the Kung Fu Kids series, he went off the rails for some years, and was sentenced to 11 years in prison for kidnapping. After his release from prison six years ago, he made a new life for himself teaching calligraphy, and also returned to the world of entertainment.
GATAO 2 revolves around Wang Shih-Hsien and Collin Chou, two close friends who violate every rule to carry out their drug trafficking activities. This triggers a bloody revenge war by the other criminal gangs. Despite this being his first experience behind the camera, Yen Cheng-Kuo, assisted by cinematographer Yao Hung-I from Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s team, set high standards by presenting several large-scale scenes of armed battle between clans.
Dear Ex, expected in theatres in late September, is the fruit of a collaboration between Mag Hsu, writer of idol dramas, and the young director Hsu Chih-Yen. The screenplay by Lu Shih-Yuan, a two-time winner at the Golden Bell Awards, tells of Roy Chiu, a student who develops a homosexual relationship with Spark Chen, the director of the musical in which he plays. But Spark ends up marrying a woman, and only after his death, does his wife Hsieh Ying-Xuan discover that the beneficiary of her husband’s insurance is actually Roy. Their rebellious son, out of resentment against his mother, takes his side. To learn more about Roy’s background, Hsieh Ying-Xuan reconsiders the relationship between him and her husband, and pledges to complete that half-finished musical from 10 years before.
Gay films are an important part of Taiwanese cinema. Following last year’s constitutional revision, it is expected that the island will become the first Asian country to recognise same-sex marriage. The gentle Dear Ex once again looks at the themes of homosexual love, but this time around there is no awkwardness involved.
a cura del Centro Espressioni Cinematografiche