Grief and healing take central stage in Kuo Chen-ti’s (郭珍弟) new film, The Boar King (山豬溫泉), which tells a deceptively quiet story of loss and rebirth inspired by the traumatic events when Typhoon Morakot devastated southern Taiwan in 2009. While it could have easily been made into a work of lachrymose sentimentality, the film thankfully doesn’t go in that direction. Instead, it looks at human suffering and pain with considerable restraint, buttressed by solid performances of Lu Yi-ching (陸弈靜) and Tsai Chen-nan (蔡振南).
Set in Baolai (寶來) in Greater Kaohsiung’s Liouguei Township (六龜), the film opens with home video footage of torrential flooding caused by Typhoon Morakot, as the off-screen cameraman witnesses the catastrophe in awe. The man’s name is Ying — played by Chen Mu-i (陳慕義) — who later disappears.
The widowed wife, Cho (Lu Yi-ching, 陸弈靜), is left with a hot spring lodge that barely survives the disaster. Seized by despair, Cho attempts and fails to commit suicide, having thought of her responsibility for Ying’s senile father, who lives with her. One day, Ying’s close friend Nan (Tsai Chen-nan, 蔡振南), a hunter, shows up at Cho’s door, offering to help rebuild the mountain inn. A reticent man, Nan has kept his tender feeling toward Cho for years.
Photo courtesy of Good Day Films
Ying’s death also brings back Cho’s step-daughter Fen (Wu I-ting, 吳伊婷), who works mundane jobs in the city. Amid grief, she meets land surveyor Garmin, played by Soda Voyu from Seediq Bale (賽德克巴萊), and love starts to bud between the two.
Meanwhile, the villagers are forced to leave the devastated area, selling their homes to a resort development company. But one by one, they receive invitations sent by Ying before he died to a banquet set to be held at the inn. Perplexed, Cho looks to the home videos shot by her late husband, hoping to unravel the secret of his death.
Five years after her less than satisfactory debut feature Step by Step (練戀舞), Kuo has returned here with a finely executed and honest work filled with lyrical moments. The polished cinematography by Paotao (寶島) allows for the full expression of nature, whether a collapsed mountain slope, a riverbed studded with massive rocks, lush woods and hidden trails.
At times, sequences from the home videos shot by Chen’s character are inserted in and fused with the present narration, not only providing clues to the man’s thinking and his mysterious disappearance, but serving a link that enables the living to search for and reconnect with the dead and to come to terms with their grief.
The daughter’s reconnection with her father also raises the issue of land and homecoming. “The mountain road to home is no longer obstructed, don’t you think?” she says to her lover. However, much of the film’s failing lies in its rather flaccid effort to explore the young woman’s transformation. Her off-screen narration appears superfluous, adding nothing significant to the story, and theater actress Wu delivers the role with punctuated intensity that sometimes belongs to the stage rather than in front of the camera.
The crowning moments in The Boar King ultimately belong to veteran thespians Lu and Tsai. In a scene toward the end, Nan recounts an unforgettable encounter with a wild boar to Cho. We follow Nan’s resonant voice into the woods, where hot spring water flows, lives are intertwined and life quietly goes on.
Last week writer Wei Lingling (魏玲靈) unloaded a remarkably conventional pro-China column in the Wall Street Journal (“From Bush’s Rebuke to Trump’s Whisper: Navigating a Geopolitical Flashpoint,” Dec 2, 2025). Wei alleged that in a phone call, US President Donald Trump advised Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi not to provoke the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over Taiwan. Wei’s claim was categorically denied by Japanese government sources. Trump’s call to Takaichi, Wei said, was just like the moment in 2003 when former US president George Bush stood next to former Chinese premier Wen Jia-bao (溫家寶) and criticized former president Chen
As I finally slid into the warm embrace of the hot, clifftop pool, it was a serene moment of reflection. The sound of the river reflected off the cave walls, the white of our camping lights reflected off the dark, shimmering surface of the water, and I reflected on how fortunate I was to be here. After all, the beautiful walk through narrow canyons that had brought us here had been inaccessible for five years — and will be again soon. The day had started at the Huisun Forest Area (惠蓀林場), at the end of Nantou County Route 80, north and east
A six-episode, behind-the-scenes Disney+ docuseries about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man, are some of the new television, films, music and games headed to a device near you. Also among the streaming offerings worth your time this week: Chip and Joanna Gaines take on a big job revamping a small home in the mountains of Colorado, video gamers can skateboard through hell in Sam Eng’s Skate Story and Rob Reiner gets the band back together for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. MOVIES ■ Rian Johnson’s third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man
Politics throughout most of the world are viewed through a left/right lens. People from outside Taiwan regularly try to understand politics here through that lens, especially those with strong personal identifications with the left or right in their home countries. It is not helpful. It both misleads and distracts. Taiwan’s politics needs to be understood on its own terms. RISE OF THE DEVELOPMENTAL STATE Arguably, both of the main parties originally leaned left-wing. The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) brought together radicals, dissidents and revolutionaries devoted to overthrowing their foreign Manchurian Qing overlords to establish a Chinese republic. Their leader, Sun Yat-sen
RSS