With the threat of Covid gone and the market returning to normal, the Taiwanese box office saw significant growth in 2023 compared to the previous year. The total revenue of Taiwanese films doubled, reaching NT$12.2 billion, with its market share increasing from 10% to 15.7%. More than 20 films broke the NT$10 million mark, a new record for the past decade. In terms of genres, half of the top 10 films had horror elements, and in terms of intellectual property, there were 3 TV series adaptations and 2 sequels.
Someday or One Day: The Movie, released between 2022 and 2023, capitalised on the popularity of the 2020 TV series of the same name with the original cast reunited for the big screen adaptation. It opened the year with an impressive gross of NT$130 million. However, its bright success was soon overshadowed by Cheng Wei-hao’s Marry My Dead Body, released on Valentine’s Day.
A unique blend of comedy, horror, action, and crime, Marry My Dead Body shattered the glass ceiling for LGBTQ+ themed films with its compelling premise of a “gay ghost marriage,” fast-paced narrative, and emotional depth, grossing a total of NT$363 million domestically. It also debuted at number one on Netflix in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, and at number seven on the global non-English film chart. Following its success, director Cheng Wei-hao and producer Jin Bai-lun have expanded the film into a franchise, with a prequel manga entitled Before I Become a Ghost and a TV series entitled GG Precinct due out in the middle of this year.
While Someday or One Day: The Movie and Marry My Dead Body had a stellar start to 2023, the two Spring Festival films U Motherbaker – The Movie and Scamsgiving, released during the Lunar New Year, fell short of expectations. U Motherbaker – The Movie, adapted from the popular Taiwanese TV series of the same name, failed to deliver a focused narrative despite the original cast and crew and the return of the beloved characters. It lost the charm of the original series, which focused on the everyday lives of ordinary people. Scamsgiving, on the other hand, is the latest work by Yeh Tien-lun, who previously dominated the Spring Festival box office with Night Market Hero and Twa-Tiu-Tiann. However, the film failed to repeat its success due to a disjointed plot and unconvincing characters.
Workers – The Movie, also based on a popular Taiwanese TV series, serves as a prequel to the series, telling the story of the three protagonists’ meeting and friendship 11 years earlier. The movie sees the return of both director Cheng Fen-fen and the original cast members Christopher Lee, Yu An-shun, and Hsueh Shih-ling. Despite the addition of family drama elements, the original’s signature mix of laughter and tears still resonated with the fan base, allowing Workers to gross nearly NT$40 million domestically.
Day Off and Eye of the Storm, both released in the spring, are two representative auteur dramas of the past year. The former takes a family setting as a starting point to depict the loving interactions between family members, while the latter incorporates thriller and disaster movie elements through audiovisual technology, to evoke the atmosphere of the Covid pandemic. Day Off, written and directed by Fu Tian-yu, depicts the emotions and affection between the people of a neighborhood who frequent an old family-run hair salon. Eye of the Storm, directed by Lin Chun-yang, takes us back to the time when SARS hit Taiwan 20 years ago. Inspired by the facts of the quarantined Hoping Hospital, the movie reflects the different facets of human nature in crisis situations.
The horror films The Rope Curse 3 and Hello Ghost!, released during the summer season, both entered the annual Top 10 highest-grossing Taiwanese films. This shows that the genre has maintained its market appeal and that various filmmakers are trying to innovate and explore new possibilities in the field.
The Rope Curse 3 is the third installment in the series that began 5 years ago. The plot is based on local customs, featuring “ghost leaders” Thao Vetsuwan and Zhong Kui, and combines the latter with Taiwanese puppet theater, while also adding elements such as parkour and a father-son relationship. Hello Ghost!, starring Tseng Ching-hua, is a remake of the 2010 Korean film of the same name, but the Taiwanese version incorporates many aspects of local culture and folklore, blending humor and emotion to tell a story of family love.
Another installment in the The Bridge Curse series, the second chapter titled Ritual continues the franchise’s blend of technology and ghost stories set in a school context. The plot follows a group of college students who accidentally unleash a demonic force while testing an augmented reality horror game. Despite a lower box office gross compared to the first Bridge Curse, the sequel’s success was bolstered by the popularity of its predecessor. The film secured overseas distribution rights before its release in Taiwan, and with the addition of two video games, the series has accumulated significant intellectual property value.
With Miss Shampoo, released last summer, Giddens Ko returns to adapting one of his own novels for the big screen. After exploring genres such as young love, fantasy thriller, and black comedy, Ko tries his hand at the gangster action genre, while maintaining his characteristically cheeky and chunibyo style. The story follows the love between a hairdresser’s assistant and a mafia boss, but the relationship between the two is stereotypical, with a sentimentality that hides materialistic fantasies. A negative factor for the box office was certainly the timing of the MeToo movement, which was gaining momentum in Taiwan at that time.
Towards the end of the year, during the Golden Horse Film Festival, Old Fox, Trouble Girl, and Tales of Taipei were released, the latter being the closing film of the festival. These films are worthy representatives of the diversity of Taiwanese cinema.
Old Fox is the new work of director and screenwriter Hsiao Ya-chuan, six years after his last film. Set in Taiwan in 1990, its plot reflects the social and psychological changes that took place during the economic bubble period. At the same time, it attempts to trace the origins of the growing gap between rich and poor in today’s society. The director himself admits that it is a “purely ideological” creation, but it is clear in the writing of the story that there is an attempt to make it accessible in order to elicit empathy from a wider audience.
Despite Old Fox’s obvious intentions of reflection and introspection, the fluidity of the plot does not suffer. Formally, the film is a departure from Hsiao Ya-chuan’s three previous, more experimental works, with greater emphasis on plot twists and narrative turns. In the film, Liu Kuan-ting and Bai Run-yin play a father and son who, during a period of economic boom and a rising Taiwanese stock market, move into a rented apartment in a building owned by a real estate tycoon played by Akio Chen.
There they befriend the young assistant who collects the rent each month. In a chance encounter, the young Bai Run-yin meets the wealthy owner, nicknamed “Old Fox,” and the two, attracted by each other’s qualities and shortcomings, develop an unusual friendship that ignites in the boy the desire to buy a house for his father.
The entire film evokes the atmosphere of Taiwan in the 1990s through its set design, furniture, costumes, music, and storyline. The child’s gaze takes us on a journey between innocence and worldliness, dreams and reality, failure and success, leaving the viewer to weigh the value of these contrasts. Old Fox was not only the top Taiwanese film at the 2023 Golden Horse Film Festival, winning four awards for Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Music, and Best Costume Design, but it also grossed over NT$15 million, making it Hsiao Ya-chuan’s highest-grossing film to date.
Trouble Girl, written and directed by Chin Chia-hua, is the first Taiwanese feature film to focus on children with ADHD. The story revolves around three protagonists: a 10-year-old girl who is considered a troublemaker at school because of her ADHD, a mother whose husband is often absent, and a support teacher who genuinely cares for both of them. However, the love between the mother and the teacher complicates the interactions between the characters, and this “triangle” enriches the film on several levels, offering a variety of perspectives on human nature.
Chin Chia-Hua, an established director with a background in advertising and winner of several Golden Bell Awards, draws inspiration from her experience as a mother to create the protagonist of Trouble Girl, the troubled Xiao-xiao. Through careful research and interviews, Chin Chia-hua built the character of Xiao-xiao and her struggles, addressing the challenges the girl faces at home, at school, and in extracurricular activities. The film offers a deep and comprehensive look at a complex issue, but what makes Trouble Girl truly special is the filmmaker’s decision to depart from the typical Taiwanese filmmaking style, which favors warm, harmonious, and reassuring tones. Instead, the director opts for a realistic and raw narrative that explores the loneliness and helplessness that lie behind the disease, as well as the bonds created between the characters. The movie is also a clear critique of adult hypocrisy.
The role of the protagonist Xiao-xiao in Trouble Girl is played by Audrey Lin, who had already made a name for herself in American Girl. Her measured and precise performance made her the youngest Best Actress winner in the history of the Golden Horse Awards. As the mother, Ivy Chen masterfully brought to life the exhaustion and inner conflict of dealing with her daughter’s problems, earning her a Golden Horse Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Beyond the Dream’s Hong Kong star Terrance Lau, in his first Taiwanese film, plays the role of the teacher caught between the two protagonists, creating a fitting tension.
International film co-productions have become increasingly common, with many foreign directors coming to Taiwan to shoot or collaborate with local production companies. A successful example is the Malaysian film Young & Fabulous, released late last year, which was acclaimed at several international film festivals, won its star Wu Kang-Ren the Best Actor award at the Golden Horse Awards, and grossed over NT$100 million at the box office. It is in this context of growing international collaboration that Tales of Taipei, produced by Bowie Tsang, was born.
Tales of Taipei brings together a diverse group of directors, including Malaysians Chong Keat Aun and Angelica Lee, Frenchman Rachid Hami, Bhutanese Pawo Choyning Dorji, Hong Kong’s Norris Wong, and Taiwanese Yin Chen-hao, and Remii Huang. Following the path of a paperboy, played by rock singer Wu Bai, the film tells several stories set in the metropolis of Taipei, from dawn to dusk.
The short films boast a stellar cast of Chinese cinema, including Angelica Lee, Karena Lam, Ethan Juan, Chen Shu-fang, Sammi Cheng, Stephy Tang, Liu Kuan-ting, Caitlin Fang, Kuo Shu-yao and Berant Zhu. Through the eyes and tastes of each director, sketches of love life in Taipei unfold in a mixture of styles ranging from the fantastic to the realistic, the ironic to the sentimental.
Whether it’s the new version of the popular “Legend of the White Snake,” which reveals a secret about the origins of a married couple; a delivery boy and a betel nut girl who fall in love through music; a Hong Kong girl who gets closer to her Taiwanese boyfriend’s father through old Hong Kong movies; a “reunion” between a boy and a girl in a disco; an unexpected pregnancy in a long-distance relationship; or the encounter between a stranger looking for prostitutes and an elderly lottery ticket seller, in their limited space, these short films transcend the boundaries of time and space, giving life to an explosion of imaginative creativity.
Translated from Chinese into English by Francesco Nati.