November Child
Last week the Taipei Times reviewer lamented the superficial rendering of Taiwan’s White Terror era as a love story in Prince of Tears (淚王子). This award-winning German film shows what might have been had there been more commitment to the gravity of the material and human complexity. A young woman and a would-be writer try to locate her mother amid the obstacles posed by Germany’s partitioned history. The lead actress (Anna Maria Muehe) also plays her mother in flashbacks.
M.W.
Another week, another manga adaptation from Japan, though this one is a little unusual because the star of the show is a homicidal maniac (Hiroshi Tamaki) with ambitions of mass murder, and the rest of the cast spend most of the time trying to stop being killed — or stop him from killing just about everyone in Japan. The diseased — but no less debonair — product of a gas attack when he was a youngster, Tamaki does not distinguish between the guilty and the innocent among his victims. A fellow survivor-turned-priest is among those on this happy chappie’s trail.
Savage Planet
In the future, when Earth has become almost uninhabitable, a greedy company seeks to make a handsome profit by taking control of an alternative planet to which some of the population can be moved, but its advance team comes under attack from dangerous creatures that resemble large bears. Actually ... they are large bears. The only notable thing about this no-budget, made-for-cable fodder from 2006 is that it’s directed by Paul Lynch, a veteran TV director who made the original Prom Night with Jamie Lee Curtis and Leslie Nielsen way back in 1980. Starts tomorrow at the Baixue theater in Ximending; yes, it’s another DVD promotion.
A French Gigolo
Another slice of life among restless French folk centers on a married, part-time gigolo (Eric Caravaca) and his latest divorcee customer (Nathalie Baye) and how their widening relationship affects both sets of friends and family. Warm reviews met this rich character study, which prefers to dabble in minds and not bodies. The wonderful Baye made this film before starring in Tsai Ming-liang’s (蔡明亮) Face (臉). French title: Cliente.
Wheat (長平大戰之麥田)
What first might appear to be another tiresome period costumer about one of the millions of battles in China’s history turns out to be something rather different. Two deserters from the Qin army in the Warring States period lucklessly find themselves in an enemy town whose men are away fighting. Their lies and ingratiations with the women gradually wear thin — especially as others arrive with contradictory news. This meticulously photographed drama-comedy is structured around elemental themes, of which wheat, the local crop, is prominent. Directed by He Ping (何平), who made The Swordsman in Double Flag Town (雙旗鎮刀客).
Lehuo festival
Tomorrow and Sunday the Spot theater is running a festival that includes rare screenings of Taiwanese short features and idiosyncratic foreign films such as Rage, The Cats of Mirikitani and Naoko Ogigami’s Megane. Entry is free.
RSS