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.
Taiwan can often feel woefully behind on global trends, from fashion to food, and influences can sometimes feel like the last on the metaphorical bandwagon. In the West, suddenly every burger is being smashed and honey has become “hot” and we’re all drinking orange wine. But it took a good while for a smash burger in Taipei to come across my radar. For the uninitiated, a smash burger is, well, a normal burger patty but smashed flat. Originally, I didn’t understand. Surely the best part of a burger is the thick patty with all the juiciness of the beef, the
The ultimate goal of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the total and overwhelming domination of everything within the sphere of what it considers China and deems as theirs. All decision-making by the CCP must be understood through that lens. Any decision made is to entrench — or ideally expand that power. They are fiercely hostile to anything that weakens or compromises their control of “China.” By design, they will stop at nothing to ensure that there is no distinction between the CCP and the Chinese nation, people, culture, civilization, religion, economy, property, military or government — they are all subsidiary
Nov.10 to Nov.16 As he moved a large stone that had fallen from a truck near his field, 65-year-old Lin Yuan (林淵) felt a sudden urge. He fetched his tools and began to carve. The recently retired farmer had been feeling restless after a lifetime of hard labor in Yuchi Township (魚池), Nantou County. His first piece, Stone Fairy Maiden (石仙姑), completed in 1977, was reportedly a representation of his late wife. This version of how Lin began his late-life art career is recorded in Nantou County historian Teng Hsiang-yang’s (鄧相揚) 2009 biography of him. His expressive work eventually caught the attention
This year’s Miss Universe in Thailand has been marred by ugly drama, with allegations of an insult to a beauty queen’s intellect, a walkout by pageant contestants and a tearful tantrum by the host. More than 120 women from across the world have gathered in Thailand, vying to be crowned Miss Universe in a contest considered one of the “big four” of global beauty pageants. But the runup has been dominated by the off-stage antics of the coiffed contestants and their Thai hosts, escalating into a feminist firestorm drawing the attention of Mexico’s president. On Tuesday, Mexican delegate Fatima Bosch staged a
RSS