New directing talents Sean Kao (高炳權) and Lin Chun-yang (林君陽) make a respectable stab at romantic comedy with The Soul of Bread (愛的麵包魂). The result successfully revitalizes the overworked genre with Taiwanese idiosyncrasies and easily connects
with audiences.
The film also boasts a winning cast led by rising star Michelle Chen (陳妍希) of You Are the Apple of My Eye (那些年，我們一起追的女孩) fame.
Photo courtesy of Wind Maker Entertainment
Chen plays Ping, the daughter of small-town bakery owner Chiu Pa (Liao Chun, 廖峻), who, now retired, spends much of his time playing in a jazz group and attending to town affairs, leaving the business in the hands of apprentice baker Gaobing (McDonalds Chen, 陳漢典).
Everyone in the village thinks Ping and Gaobing are meant to be together. But when Gaobing proposes, Ping hesitates. Before settling down, she wants to visit France, and experience the world beyond her immediate environment. But there’s no place Gaobing would rather be than in the small town with Ping and her family.
Their quiet life is interrupted by the arrival of Bread (Anthony Neely, 倪安東), a half-Taiwanese, half-French celebrity chef and TV personality who travels to the village to track down the bread that his recently deceased mother often talked about.
Bread persuades Chiu Pa into taking him on as an apprentice, and he quickly charms the entire village with his toothsome smile and yummy pastries. Meanwhile, Gaobing is distraught as he watches romance bud between Ping and the French-speaking prince charming.
Eventually, the guys duel, in the form of a baking contest, over the girl. It is up to Ping to decide who the winner is and whether she will stay home with Gaobing or go to Paris with Bread.
Modeled on the made-for-TV film of the same title that Kao directed in 2006, The Soul of Bread adheres to its genre roots and packs plenty of romance and lighthearted humor into its nearly two-hour-long screening time. Fun, playful moments, such as a musical number that involves lobsters and crabs, liven up the story. Needless to say, food plays an important role in the movie as Neely’s character shows how a chef should be passionate and treat ingredients with the utmost respect. He helps improve the villagers’ love lives with his cuisine.
Though the directing duo behind The Soul of Bread fall foul of several moviemaking pitfalls, their biggest achievement is spicing up the rom-com genre with a distinctively Taiwanese flair.
On the one hand, we have the foreign-educated, cosmopolitan Bread. On the other, there’s Gaobing, an archetypical taike (台客), who wears flip-flops and performs at local temple fairs. The tight, focused script neatly revolves around the motif of the traditional versus the contemporary that takes shape in what is painted as a typical small town where residents are loud and full of warmth and the deity Nezha (哪吒) and pineapple bread (菠蘿麵包), a type of sweet bun sold at mom-and-pop bakeries, play a part in winning a girl’s heart.
Appearing alongside well-cast veteran actors, including Liao, Michelle Chen is sweet and lovable, while Taiwanese American actor Neely does an adequate job as Mr Perfect. Noted for his hooligan roles in Monga (艋舺) and Jump! Boys (翻滾吧！男孩), McDonalds Chen is no stranger to strong emotions, but he appears awkward when struggling to convey the more subtle feelings his character Gaobing requires.
With a slick look, solid production values and a fun story line, The Soul of Bread is set to become a blockbuster for the Lunar New Year season. The movie has rosy prospects outside Taiwan too. Its rights have already been sold to Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia.
The Taipei Times last week reported that the rising share of seniors in the population is reshaping the nation’s housing markets. According to data from the Ministry of the Interior, about 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident. H&B Realty chief researcher Jessica Hsu (徐佳馨), quoted in the article, said that there is rising demand for elderly-friendly housing, including units with elevators, barrier-free layouts and proximity to healthcare services. Hsu and others cited in the article highlighted the changing family residential dynamics, as children no longer live with parents,
It is jarring how differently Taiwan’s politics is portrayed in the international press compared to the local Chinese-language press. Viewed from abroad, Taiwan is seen as a geopolitical hotspot, or “The Most Dangerous Place on Earth,” as the Economist once blazoned across their cover. Meanwhile, tasked with facing down those existential threats, Taiwan’s leaders are dying their hair pink. These include former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) and Kaohsiung Mayor Chen Chi-mai (陳其邁), among others. They are demonstrating what big fans they are of South Korean K-pop sensations Blackpink ahead of their concerts this weekend in Kaohsiung.
Taiwan is one of the world’s greatest per-capita consumers of seafood. Whereas the average human is thought to eat around 20kg of seafood per year, each Taiwanese gets through 27kg to 35kg of ocean delicacies annually, depending on which source you find most credible. Given the ubiquity of dishes like oyster omelet (蚵仔煎) and milkfish soup (虱目魚湯), the higher estimate may well be correct. By global standards, let alone local consumption patterns, I’m not much of a seafood fan. It’s not just a matter of taste, although that’s part of it. What I’ve read about the environmental impact of the
Oct 20 to Oct 26 After a day of fighting, the Japanese Army’s Second Division was resting when a curious delegation of two Scotsmen and 19 Taiwanese approached their camp. It was Oct. 20, 1895, and the troops had reached Taiye Village (太爺庄) in today’s Hunei District (湖內), Kaohsiung, just 10km away from their final target of Tainan. Led by Presbyterian missionaries Thomas Barclay and Duncan Ferguson, the group informed the Japanese that resistance leader Liu Yung-fu (劉永福) had fled to China the previous night, leaving his Black Flag Army fighters behind and the city in chaos. On behalf of the
RSS