After a string of strong showings at international film festivals over the past several years, Taiwanese movies are some of the most anticipated entries at this year's Cannes festival.
Both Hou Hsiao-hsien (侯孝賢) and Tsai Ming-liang (蔡明亮) have new works in this year's competition list, as they both did in 1998. This year, the two are accompanied by a youngblood of Taiwanese filmmaking, Hsiao Ya-chuan (蕭雅全), whose film Mirror Image (命帶追逐) will run in the Director's Fortnight portion of the festival, a separate competition intended to honor and encourage young filmmakers and which issues an International Critics Award.
Tsai's film What Time Is It There? (你那邊幾點) will premiere May 15 and Hou's Millennium Mambo (千禧曼波) will run on May 19. Hsiao's film will be shown May 11.
The screenings of Tsai's and Hou's films during the final days of the festival bode well for their chances at winning an award, as the best contenders have traditionally had late slots at Cannes.
Not long into Mistress Dispeller, a quietly jaw-dropping new documentary from director Elizabeth Lo, the film’s eponymous character lays out her thesis for ridding marriages of troublesome extra lovers. “When someone becomes a mistress,” she says, “it’s because they feel they don’t deserve complete love. She’s the one who needs our help the most.” Wang Zhenxi, a mistress dispeller based in north-central China’s Henan province, is one of a growing number of self-styled professionals who earn a living by intervening in people’s marriages — to “dispel” them of intruders. “I was looking for a love story set in China,” says Lo,
It was on his honeymoon in Kuala Lumpur, looking out of his hotel window at the silvery points of the world’s tallest twin skyscrapers, that Frank decided it was time to become taller. He had recently confessed to his new wife how much his height had bothered him since he was a teenager. As a man dedicated to self-improvement, Frank wanted to take action. He picked up the phone, called a clinic in Turkey that specializes in leg lengthening surgery — and made a booking. “I had a lot of second thoughts — at the end of the day, someone’s going
In the next few months tough decisions will need to be made by the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) and their pan-blue allies in the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT). It will reveal just how real their alliance is with actual power at stake. Party founder Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) faced these tough questions, which we explored in part one of this series, “Ko Wen-je, the KMT’s prickly ally,” (Aug. 16, page 12). Ko was open to cooperation, but on his terms. He openly fretted about being “swallowed up” by the KMT, and was keenly aware of the experience of the People’s First Party
Standing on top of a small mountain, Kim Seung-ho gazes out over an expanse of paddy fields glowing in their autumn gold, the ripening grains swaying gently in the wind. In the distance, North Korea stretches beyond the horizon. “It’s so peaceful,” says the director of the DMZ Ecology Research Institute. “Over there, it used to be an artillery range, but since they stopped firing, the nature has become so beautiful.” The land before him is the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, a strip of land that runs across the Korean peninsula, dividing North and South Korea roughly along the 38th parallel north. This