Ending Cut (老徐的完結篇)
A short film, running just 59 minutes, Ending Cut is yet another sentimental take on life in Taiwan. Produced by veteran filmmakers Wang Tung (王童) and Wu Nien-jen (吳念真) and created by aspiring director Liao Chi-hua (廖祺華), the movie is about an old man, his two sons having more or less abandoned him, who picks up a small video camera and starts recording his life for posterity. The leading role is played with assurance by Taiwanese new wave auteur Ko Yi-cheng (柯一正), and the film won a Best Supporting Actor gong at the 12th Taipei International Film Festival (第十 二屆台北電影節) among other awards. A film with lots of heart that will also test your love of all things Taiwanese.
Villain (Akunin)
High-profile Japanese release based on a novel by highly accomplished writer Shuichi Yoshida. Villain, which is a crime thriller-cum-melodrama, focuses, after an elaborate setup, on two lonely people on the lam. Yuichi Shimizu (Satoshi Tsumabuki) is a young man who has killed an insurance saleswoman. He meets Mitsuyo (Eri Fukatsu) through a dating agency, and she dissuades him from turning himself in. During their time on the run, the two develop a passionate relationship. At the same time, both their families, and the victim’s, suffer the fallout caused by this decision. Big-time melodrama with superior acting and a contemporary nihilistic vibe.
Room in Rome (Habitacion en Roma)
Spanish production with English-language dialogue that walks the line between art house and soft porn with shameless abandon. Alba (Elena Anaya) and Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) are strangers from opposite ends of Europe (Spain and Russia) who chance upon each other in a bar. One is straight, the other gay, but a game of seduction begins in which clothes are quickly shed, but the baring of souls, as the film’s promotional material emphasizes, is much slower. Much is made of the psychological foreplay, and while the setting never strays from the room in Rome, director Julio Medem shows some skill in working the camera to broaden the visual scope of the film.
The Woman Who Dreamt of a Man (Kvinden der Dromte om en Mand)
More steamy art house fare, this time from Denmark. The film examines sexual obsession from a female perspective. Karen (Sonja Richter) is a successful photographer whose career gives her little time for family life. She meets Machik (Marcin Dorocinski), a professor from Warsaw, and falls for him hard. When he tries to extricate himself, Karen is not having any of it. Director Per Fly adopts a first-person view that blurs reality and fantasy elements. There are some hot bedroom sequences, but this material has been covered so often that even the writhing of well-toned bodies is not enough to get audiences going.
Shodo Girls (Shodo Garuzu!!: Watashitachi no Koshien)
A film about a calligraphy club in a small-town Japanese high school that follows the well-worn narrative of oddball teachers and unlikely students overcoming adversity to achieve a goal — often winning some kind of competition — and also becoming better and more mature people in the process. Shodo Girls’ only innovation is to bring this tried and tested formula to the discipline of calligraphy.
Final Days
A television drama by director Thomas Berger that looks at the last days before the fall of the Berlin Wall through a cast of characters linked through various relationships with a young couple who attempted the dangerous journey from East Germany to West Germany in 1983. One made it, the other didn’t, and the ramifications of this minor tragedy of the Cold War lingers on into the late 1980s as agitation for reunification gets serious and the battle for hearts and minds gears up. Originally released in 2008, the film runs for 186 minutes and is good value for money, if nothing else.
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In a stark demonstration of how award-winning breakthroughs can come from the most unlikely directions, researchers have won an Ig Nobel prize for discovering that mammals can breathe through their anuses. After a series of tests on mice, rats and pigs, Japanese scientists found the animals absorb oxygen delivered through the rectum, work that underpins a clinical trial to see whether the procedure can treat respiratory failure. The team is among 10 recognized in this year’s Ig Nobel awards (see below for more), the irreverent accolades given for achievements that “first make people laugh, and then make them think.” They are not