Bonjour Paris festival
The Changchun theater in Taipei is hosting this French film festival until New Year’s Eve. The theme is “When love meets literature,” which sounds like 90 percent of the French film industry’s output, but why carp? Toplining is biopic Sagan starring Sylvie Testud (La Vie en Rose, Vengeance) as the turbulent French writer; the film is also opening the French-themed Taipei book festival early next year. The rest is a mixture of titles that (unfortunately) have already had theatrical releases here, including Clara and I, Eric Rohmer’s Le Rayon Vert, The Ring Finger, Little Lili from 2003 and Louis Malle’s Damage, among others.
Park Benches
If you’ve seen all these French titles already, there’s another Gallic offering unconnected to the Changchun festival. It’s got as many celebrity actors as the festival’s offerings put together, but that didn’t stop some critics from wondering what all the fuss is about. A well-to-do neighborhood is the setting for a series of tales of quirky and unsettled characters that start then finish all too quickly. Jacques Tati it ain’t — though there is some comedy.
Bombay Summer
An Indian couple living comfortably in Bombay run into an artist/drug dealer who changes their lives — and his own — and not necessarily for the better. Winner of the Best Film, Best Director (Joseph Mathew-Varghese) and Best Actress (Tannishtha Chatterjee) gongs at last month’s MIAAC Film Festival, a New York event for Indian-themed films, it’s something of a miracle that this non-musical is getting a Taiwan release, so those not enchanted at the thought of donning 3D glasses for nearly three hours watching Avatar might consider this adult-friendly trip instead.
Give Me Your Hand
Weird release of the week makes Avatar look like formula. Eurotwin brothers make their way across Europe to attend a family funeral, along the way pouting a lot, finding lust among the locals and getting into wrestling matches over long-dormant rivalries. Pretty as a picture, but narrative meandering and copulation time-outs will remind the viewer why it’s being screened at the Baixue grindhouse in Ximending. Original title: Donne-Moi la Main.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Toward the outside edge of Taichung City, in Wufeng District (霧峰去), sits a sprawling collection of single-story buildings with tiled roofs belonging to the Wufeng Lin (霧峰林家) family, who rose to prominence through success in military, commercial, and artistic endeavors in the 19th century. Most of these buildings have brick walls and tiled roofs in the traditional reddish-brown color, but in the middle is one incongruous property with bright white walls and a black tiled roof: Yipu Garden (頤圃). Purists may scoff at the Japanese-style exterior and its radical departure from the Fujianese architectural style of the surrounding buildings. However, the property
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