`Taipei 21' a crossroad between bread and love

If Alex Yang's (楊順清) debut movie The Trigger (扣板機) can be described as a story about the anger of youth and the irony of Taiwanese society, then his new film tries to look deeper into young adults' hearts, with a bit more warmth -- especially to those who live in the urban jungle of Taipei.

Basically, the story of Taipei 21 is the dialectic between love and bread. Is love something people try to escape from? Or the hardship of earning a crust? Or is bread a necessity for love?

Director Yang tries to ask these questions by telling the story of a 20-something couple, Hsiao-chin (Lin Meng-chin (林孟瑾) and Ah-hong (Tsai Hsin-hong, 蔡信弘). But he tries not to force solutions to these universal questions we sometimes ask ourselves.

A-hong and his girlfriend Hsiao-chin are typical office workers making a living in Taipei. They have been going out for seven years. A-hong is a housing agent and Hsiao-chin is a clerk at a fashion boutique.

Everyday he wears his cheap suit, rides his second-hand motorbike around the streets of Taipei, posting house-for-sale ads on poles. She is always elegantly-clad but in reality she also lives in a shabby house with family debts.

She has a father who is a gambler, a mom having an affair with the father's creditor, a criminal older brother who lives at home with his drug-addict wife and a baby daughter.

In the beginning of the film, one sees the typical scenery of Taipei. People work hard every day, earning just enough to pay the rent. Working class people struggle to run away from the stigma of their class.

This may be too stereotyped and one may find the beginning part boring, but as the movie goes on, more drama, wit and humor come into play.

On A-hong's birthday, Hsiao-chin gives an ultimatum: either buy a house and get married, or she will go abroad to stud. A-hong cannot even afford to rent a decent flat for the two to live in, let alone buy a house. The seven-year relationship immediately faces a crisis.

The latter part of the story tells about how the couple deals with their supposed break-up. By revealing their situations to friends and colleagues, we all realize what kind of problems they can face choosing between bread and love.

There is some witty dialogue between A-hong and his rich Japanese friend. "You rich people are so strange that you like to buy up everything, even memories and friendships and put them into your little private museum.

"You Taiwanese think about money too much! You only know about making money but don't know how to cherish things around you."

There are also humorous subplots, such as Hsiao-chin's short affair with a rich middle-aged man.

Yang used to be the assistant director/script writer and actor for renowned director Edward Yang (楊德昌). His first movie The Trigger has the obvious influence of Edward Yang. In Taipei 21, Alex Yang seems to have walked out of the shadow of Edward Yang and found his own path.

Unfortunately, like the lead characters choosing between love and money, the movie itself looks tentative, switching from social realism to pure entertainment. As such, it occasionally falls between the two. The photography and narrative looks a bit slow but the story tries to attract younger audiences. Young Taiwanese may need a little patience to finish this film about their own lives.