Director Lien Yi-chi (連奕琦) takes on lesbian love and death in his debut feature Make Up (命運化妝師). Boasting exquisite cinematography and solid acting from a well-chosen cast, the slickly produced movie is a competent stab at a genre that is rarely tackled in Taiwanese cinema, but a flawed script lets the project down.
Promising young actress Nikki Hsieh (謝欣穎) plays Min-hsiu, a mortuary beautician who prefers the company of the dead to that of the living. Her quiet life is disrupted when the cosmetologist discovers that her new assignment is working on the body of her former high school teacher, Chen Ting (Sonia Sui, 隋棠), who is believed to have committed suicide. Through a series of flashbacks, we quickly learn that Ming-hsiu had a lesbian romance with Chen during her teen years.
Heartbroken by his wife’s death, affluent psychiatrist Nie (Matt Wu, 吳中天) approaches Min-hsiu in the hope of discovering more about Chen’s past. Meanwhile, detective Kuo (Ray Chang, 張睿家) seeks the beautician’s help in investigating the death.
Photo Courtesy of Good Day Films
As she delves into the truth behind her ex-lover’s self-destruction, Min-hsiu gradually unearths the secrets and inner demons that haunt not only Nie and Kuo, but herself as well.
Despite the looks of a thriller, the film is more of a study on the dark side of human nature than a mystery-solving exercise.
The challenge is partially met by the well-cast actors, who carry the narrative forward without falling foul of melodramatic cliche. One example is Wu, who, after years of struggling with poorly written roles, finally plays a flesh and blood character. He shows that he is capable of delivering expressive cadences and nuanced emotions as a man tortured by love. Another pleasant surprise is model-turned-actress Sui, who illuminates her character with a gripping fragility and a sense of despair, and whose debut performance on the silver screen is marked by restraint.
As forceful and telling as the actors are, the atmospheric cinematography by Canada-educated Randy Che (車亮逸) weaves together a delicate play of light and shadow, accentuating moods and emotions with a kaleidoscope of tones and luminosities.
The film’s obvious failing lies in its underdeveloped script, which lacks adequate detail to fully develop the characters. For example, the taboo love between Chen and Min-hsiu doesn’t come across as intense enough. Similarly, more screen time is needed to explain the psychiatrist’s transformation from a loving husband to a lost soul.
After female director Cho Li’s (卓立) unsuccessful mystery thriller Zoom Hunting (獵豔) last year, Make Up is a more polished effort and one step closer to a well-narrated story that audiences can empathize with.
Directed by: Lien Yi-chi (連奕琦)
Starring: Nikki Hsieh (謝欣穎) as Min-hsiu, Sonia Sui (隋棠) as Chen Ting, Matt Wu (吳中天) as Nie Cheng-fu, Ray Chang (張睿家) as Kuo Yung-ming
Language: In Mandarin with Chinese and English subtitles
Running Time: 107 Minutes
Taiwan Release: Today
This month it was revealed that China has been telling US officials that the Taiwan Strait is not an international waterway, but China’s territorial waters. “China has sovereignty, sovereign rights and jurisdiction over the Taiwan Straits,” the Global Times thundered last week. The slow, inexorable expansion of China’s territorial claims by land and sea signals that once Taiwan is annexed, this problem of Chinese expansionism will only become more dire. As a solid explainer from The Interpreter observed last year, China treats “territorial waters” as sovereign waters: “China’s interpretation of the territorial sea is that the state has the exclusive
June 20 to June 26 After enduring nearly a decade of abuse, 22-year-old Teng Ju-wen (鄧如雯) killed her husband Lin A-chi (林阿棋) during his sleep in October 1993. Teng was forced to marry Lin after he raped her when she was 13, and over the years he not only regularly beat her, but also terrorized her family and at one point stuck the heads of their two sons into a running washing machine during a fit of anger. Teng ran away for a few months after a particularly nasty incident, but returned after Lin smashed up her parents house and threatened
The greatest worry Ma Yu-chuan (馬幼娟) has about death is not properly saying farewell to a loved one. And she should know. The practising Muslim recalls that she had a falling out with her father when she was in college. One night he tried to make amends, but she angrily rebuffed him. He died in a car accident the next day. “Why do we fear death?” is among the many questions posed in the first corridor at the Museum of World Religions (世界宗教博物館) in New Taipei City, where Ma serves as director. There is no correct answer, she says, but
Every day for the past 14 years, 72-year-old Masaoki Tsuchiya has set out before sunrise to search for a bird rescued from extinction in Japan. Starting his car under star-dotted skies unpolluted by light, he works alone in the pre-dawn chill, marking sightings or absences in a planner, interrupted only by the crackle of a walkie-talkie. The bird he is looking for is called “toki” in Japanese, and its presence on his home of Sado island is testament to a remarkable conservation program. In just under two decades, Japan’s population of wild toki has gone from zero to nearly 500, all on Sado,