Director Chang Tso-chi’s (張作驥) cinematic world is usually populated by social underdogs, gangsters and men trapped in vicious cycles of violence. But in When Love Comes (當愛來的時候), his newest film, females take center stage in a tale that follows the road to reconciliation and understanding that the members of an extended family travel down.
Chang’s latest drama begins with 16-year-old Laichun (Li Yi-chieh, 李亦捷) walking through a bustling eatery in a traditional market. We quickly learn it’s a family business and the voice and thoughts of the teenage girl transport us into her hectic family life.
Her father, Dark Face (Lin Yu-shun, 林郁順), comes from a poor family in Kinmen and married Xue Feng (Lu Xue-feng, 呂雪鳳), whose wealthy family lacks a male heir. Xue Feng is infertile and allows Dark Face to keep his childhood lover Zhihua (He Zi-hua, 何子華), who bears him two daughters (Laichun and Lairi) and a boy, as a concubine. They all live together under one roof, but home life is far from easygoing.
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings
Jie, Dark Face’s autistic younger brother, moves in with the family, causing yet more squabbles. Domestic quarrels soon turn into a full-blown crisis when Laichun becomes pregnant and her boyfriend disappears.
The family’s females- — its powerful matriarch, dutiful mistress and teenager struggling to come to terms with the abrupt end to her adolescence — dominate the house. Dark Face is meek but thoughtful, a henpecked figure dissimilar to any of the father characters in Chang’s previous works, which include drunks, gamblers and irresponsible men who abandon their families.
Chang’s trademark fatalism mellows when toward the end of the film tragedy strikes and the women band together, offering each other solace.
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings
The director imbues his characters with warmth and humor and constructs an authentic family setting that could easily have veered off into the melodramatic in less talented hands.
Known for his cold treatment of the world in films like The Best of Times (美麗時光, 2002) and Soul of a Demon (蝴蝶, 2008), and giving his desperate protagonists magical moments that allow them to temporarily escape the cruelty of their lives, with When Love Comes the director seems to have broken many of his filmmaking habits.
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings
DIRECTED BY: Chang Tso-chi (張作驥)
STARRING: Li Yi-CHIEH (李亦捷) as Laichun, Lu Xue-feng (呂雪鳳) as Xue Feng, Lin Yu-shun (林郁順) as Dark Face, He Zi-hua (何子華) as Zhihua, Kao Meng-jie (高盟傑) as Jie
Language: Mandarin and Hoklo (commonly known as Taiwanese)with Chinese and English subtitles
RUNNING TIME: 106 MINUTES
TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY
The Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association’s 2021 road safety guidelines pretty much says it all. “Taiwan’s drivers are inclined to prioritize vehicles over pedestrians. Be aware that their driving manners are often not as good. Even when it’s a green light, watch carefully for cars at all times when crossing the crosswalk. Be alert of cars that try to quickly turn right in front of pedestrians. Even if you’re on the sidewalk, you must still watch for scooters.” Japanese student Shun Komatsu referenced these advisories last month in a widely shared post on the News Lens, where he praised everything here besides the
Chris Findler says that the introduction of neural machine translation software has reduced the demand for human translators. “I am pessimistic about the future of traditional translation jobs,” says Findler, a lecturer of translation and interpretation at National Taiwan Normal University (NTNU). Online translators such as DeepL Translator, Yandex and Babylon offer accurate translations in dozens of languages, which means that a human translator may no longer be necessary for some jobs. Machine translation software’s growing influence is irreversible. Translation software can utilize artificial neural networks and large databases in order to accurately predict sequences of words and provide nuanced expressions
Among the Amis people around Chenggong Township (成功) in Taitung County there is a story of a place called Malaulau, ma being a prefix and laulau, meaning “withered.” In fact, that is the old name for Chenggong in Hoklo (more commonly known as Taiwanese): “Malaulau” (麻荖漏) is taken from the Amis word. What does that name refer to? In Amis oral histories, it is the place where a massive wave struck Chenggong, killing many people. The wave was quite localized and Amis communities to the north have no legends of that event. The east coast south of Yilan has good protection
More than two decades after journalist Craig Addison coined the term “Silicon Shield,” the concept remains as relevant as ever, if not even more. The idea that global — including Chinese — reliance on Taiwan’s semiconductor industry has been a major deterrent of war between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait is still frequently espoused today, especially as tensions continue to soar. On Monday, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) declared during in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would render the company’s factories “non-operable” and would create “great