narrating the story, the film also addresses issues of cultural identity, particularly among youth that swing between eastern and western cultures, and between
modernity and tradition.
Identity seems to be a recurrent motif in Cheng’s works. In the most successfully
narrated segment of Do Over, an illegal immigrant named Ding An (定安) from Thailand works for Taiwanese gangsters for years in the hope that the big boss would help him to get an ID card. Willing to risk his life for a legal identity, Ding An
confronts the boss in the climax, shouting out the question that concerns all the people living on the island: who we are?
The anomic life of young urban
dwellers is brought out in another segment of the film that tells the tale of two Taipei youngsters who use drugs and embark on an inner journey.
Visually stylish and imaginative, the story does a fitting job and creates a contem-porary image of the younger generation.
But the director said that it was not his intention to highlight the life and spirit of youth in the film. “I guess being a guy like me living in a city like this naturally makes the film tinged with such aura,” Cheng said.
Musician Lim Giong (林強), veteran film editor Chen Po-wen (陳博文) and award-winning sound editing master Tu Duu-chih (杜篤之) helped Cheng bring his project to fruition.
The Leader Group (利達集團), Taiwan’s foremost digital media postproduction company that has participated in the making of US blockbusters such as The Matrix, invested in Do Over and the firm has sought opportunities to help the local movie industry with its state-of-the-art equipment and software.
Leader’s advanced technology opened up new horizons for Cheng. “Technological support made lots of things possible and suddenly we had so many options. When you face technical limitations, your creativity is put to a test. But when the possibilities open up, your creativity is also put on trial,” Cheng said.
Though the visual effects in the film aim to startle, character is the center of Cheng’s cinematic world. “Actually the film is tailor-made for Huang Jian-wei (黃健瑋) [who plays the role of Ding An]. I think actors are the most important part of a film.
“When I create a role and leave it to the actor, the characters are no longer mine and it is up to the actor to bring the role alive. In this sense, it is a collective work of performers and myself,” Cheng said.
Like Huang, most of the actors in the film are graduates of National Taiwan University of Arts (國立台灣藝術大學) theater department.
“I don’t work on schedule. I hold my ideas and thought and let them settle in while thinking of my actors. And when the time is right, the film will come naturally,” Cheng said.
Setting no plan for the future as he believes the future is unmanageable, Cheng takes a leisurely pace toward his filmmaking prospect as he feels the need to spend time examining his life and himself as well as the possibilities his actors can offer before moving on to the next project. “Hopefully, it [Do Over] won’t be my last film,” Cheng said.
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