Zeus International Production, a relatively new arrival in Taiwan's film distribution sector, has made it a point to bring mainstream French cinema to Taiwan (Season's Beatings and Read My Lips ), sending a message to the film-going public that French film need not be synonymous with art house or high-brow.
Its selection has been unashamedly aimed at the mass market and though cinephiles might sneer, these films introduce a different sensibility into the Matrix Reloaded dominated screens of Taipei.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS
With The Girl from Paris, Zeus has settled on another low key slice-of-life drama that comes off as something made for television; against the background of high-tech, high-concept, big-budget and megastar-driven pap currently dominating cinema screens.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ZEUS
The give-away is the loving attention given to the scenic beauty of the Rhone-Alps region, where this movie is set, a kind of grandeur that does not usually translate well to the small screen.
The camera work, by Antoine Heberle, is evocative without being picturesque, supporting the film's realist credentials.
Girl tells the story of Sandrine Dumez (Mathilde Seigner), a software engineer who has had enough of the big city and has decided to seek the solitude of the rural life. She has overcome the considerable bureaucratic hurdles to qualify her to become the owner of a now neglected farm deep in the foothills of the Alps, a place where the dirt road gives out to rugged mountain pasture.
Any expectation that there is going to be any city-slicker-comes-unstuck-in-rural-setting slapstick is quickly put to rest by the low-key psychological realism of the opening scenes, which deftly outlines Sandrine's character stubborn, unsentimental and unglamorous. The rural scenes are not the chocolate box type that could have been expected and reflect, perhaps, the director's own rural upbringing.
Although the pace is unhurried, Christian Carion gradually draws you into the world that Sandrine has chosen to enter -- and his eye is as unsentimental as that of his protagonist. At a training exercise for those preparing to take up life on the land, a pig is unsentimentally dispatched with a revolver bullet to the head and the blood collected for future use. In this scene that shatters the image of mundane life, Carion shows a deft touch, avoiding the pitfalls of making rural life either comic or idyllic.
Sandrine is aware of many challenges, but one she is not prepared for is Adrien (Michel Serrault), the curmudgeonly owner of the farm she is buying. With a bold-faced audacity that is the privilege of those who no longer care, he gets her to agree to his continued presence on the farm for a further 18 months after its sale.
What follows -- a duet between Serrault and Seigner -- is fairly predictable, but it is executed with a certain tough-mindedness and gentle humor that is appealing because of its relative blandness.
There is a feel-good factor at work, but the scenes of emotion, as Adrian recalls the destruction wrought by the German's during World War II and the ravages of mad cow disease are honest, standing away from the lure of tugging heart strings.
For all the pathos of Adrian's condition, he remains throughout the film a tough, misanthropic and bitterly lonely man, a man scared by an environment that he both loves and hates.
While the balance between the conventions of romance and realism sometimes get a little out of kilter, this debut film is a craftsman-like work of storytelling that manages to touch on serious issues without losing its essential lightness.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
The following three paragraphs are just some of what the local Chinese-language press is reporting on breathlessly and following every twist and turn with the eagerness of a soap opera fan. For many English-language readers, it probably comes across as incomprehensibly opaque, so bear with me briefly dear reader: To the surprise of many, former pop singer and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) ex-lawmaker Yu Tien (余天) of the Taiwan Normal Country Promotion Association (TNCPA) at the last minute dropped out of the running for committee chair of the DPP’s New Taipei City chapter, paving the way for DPP legislator Su
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist