Tenderly sadomasochistic and defiant toward politically correct views on gender politics, Chinese director Liu Fendou’s (劉奮鬥) second feature Ocean Flame (一半海水，一半火燄) takes the bad-guy-corrupting-innocent-girl story to the extreme with this tale of a tortured love affair between a ruthless criminal and an innocent waitress.
The film plays out in flashbacks as
ex-con Wang Yao (Liao Fan, 廖凡) barges in on a family after being released from prison. A small-time criminal who ran a prostitution ring with friends before his incarceration, Wang made a comfortable living by blackmailing male customers in hotel-room sex scams.
To the unscrupulous Wang, it is love at first sight with attractive young waitress Li Chuan (Monica Mok, 莫小奇). The two are soon consumed with sex and passion, captivatingly shown in a sex scene on a glittering, empty beach.
Yet as Wang introduces Li to his sordid world and lists her as one of his working girls, the pair’s desperate addiction to love inevitably paves the way for self-destruction.
The third big-screen adaptation of renowned Chinese writer Wang Shuo’s (王朔) novel of the same title (previous versions include the 2001 US film Love the Hard Way starring Adrien Brody), Liu’s violent and erotically charged film creates an enclosed world in which the characters, twisted and bursting with overwrought emotions, swing between unsettling sadomasochism and brutal romanticism, the contrasting feelings suggested by the film’s title.
Chinese actor Liao possesses enough dangerous charisma to help him get away with the sometimes overwritten dialogue and come off as an almost enchanting abuser. Newcomer Mok has been nominated for best leading actress at the upcoming Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎) for her daring and intense performance. The cameos by Hong Kong veteran actors, however, feel superfluous to the narrative.
Exactingly arranged and masterfully crafted in terms of filmmaking, Ocean Flame derives its charm, or shortcoming to some, from a pronounced feel of theatricality and staged emotions that will attract art-house moviegoers with dark characters whose pride and despair lead to self-destruction.
Wooden houses wedged between concrete, crumbling brick facades with roofs gaping to the sky, and tiled art deco buildings down narrow alleyways: Taichung Central District’s (中區) aging architecture reveals both the allure and reality of the old downtown. From Indigenous settlement to capital under Qing Dynasty rule through to Japanese colonization, Taichung’s Central District holds a long and layered history. The bygone beauty of its streets once earned it the nickname “Little Kyoto.” Since the late eighties, however, the shifting of economic and government centers westward signaled a gradual decline in the area’s evolving fortunes. With the regeneration of the once
Even by the standards of Ukraine’s International Legion, which comprises volunteers from over 55 countries, Han has an unusual backstory. Born in Taichung, he grew up in Costa Rica — then one of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies — where a relative worked for the embassy. After attending an American international high school in San Jose, Costa Rica’s capital, Han — who prefers to use only his given name for OPSEC (operations security) reasons — moved to the US in his teens. He attended Penn State University before returning to Taiwan to work in the semiconductor industry in Kaohsiung, where he
On May 2, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫), at a meeting in support of Taipei city councilors at party headquarters, compared President William Lai (賴清德) to Hitler. Chu claimed that unlike any other democracy worldwide in history, no other leader was rooting out opposing parties like Lai and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). That his statements are wildly inaccurate was not the point. It was a rallying cry, not a history lesson. This was intentional to provoke the international diplomatic community into a response, which was promptly provided. Both the German and Israeli offices issued statements on Facebook
Perched on Thailand’s border with Myanmar, Arunothai is a dusty crossroads town, a nowheresville that could be the setting of some Southeast Asian spaghetti Western. Its main street is the final, dead-end section of the two-lane highway from Chiang Mai, Thailand’s second largest city 120kms south, and the heart of the kingdom’s mountainous north. At the town boundary, a Chinese-style arch capped with dragons also bears Thai script declaring fealty to Bangkok’s royal family: “Long live the King!” Further on, Chinese lanterns line the main street, and on the hillsides, courtyard homes sit among warrens of narrow, winding alleyways and
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