With heavyweight producer Hsu Li-kong (徐立功)and seasoned television commercial and music video director Leading Lee (李鼎) at the helm, this debut feature should have been a winner — a pop-idol-encrusted cast acting out the familiar plotline of a woman’s search for self-discovery and true love. Unfortunately, the film’s unfocused script, empty visuals and stiff performances mean My So Called Love is likely to be regarded as a regrettable offering in Hsu’s otherwise successful producing career, which includes such titles as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (臥虎藏龍) and The River (河流).
This film follows Kitty (Barbie Hsu, 徐熙媛), the pop star and actress better known as Big S (大S), and her 10-year journey to find love. First up is high-school sweetheart Liang (Eddie Peng, 彭于晏). Unlike many hormone-charged teenagers, the delectably tanned Liang is a well-mannered gentleman who loves Kitty — but in a platonic way.
Guo is Kitty’s second amour, whom she first encounters when she is forced to prostitute herself over the Internet to make ends meet while Liang is away on military service. Experienced in the game of romance and desire, the older Guo is a charming yuppie who treasures lust over love.
Fast-forward a decade and Kitty has grown into a successful businesswoman, but still finds herself unable to escape her love-hate relationship with Guo. Last but not least in the succession of paramours is the younger Sunshine (Tung Ming-hsiang, 東明相), a girl who gives Kitty hope again. Tung, who’s hearing-impaired both on and off screen, is warm, loving and seems to embody everything Kitty seeks in life — a home and unconditional love.
Based on the novel by pop music composer and lyricist Hsu Wei-ching (許葦晴), which is in turn based on a true story, the film is ambitious in its attempt to portray women in a contemporary light by touching upon quasi-feminist issues such as sexuality and the changing concept of what constitutes a family and home. But despite the film’s technical polish, the aimless story soon begins to gnaw away at its watchability, which is eroded even further by forced plotlines and dialogue that is both lifeless and somewhat pretentious. As an example, just imagine the following scene: a Don Giovanni-type piles tomes of literature onto the backseat of his luxury vehicle to impress the ladies. The young woman he is courting picks up one of the books and, as if on cue, asks innocently, “What is love?”
In terms of acting the cast is incapable of rescuing the flat, formulaic characters from disaster. Chang looks ridiculous in his portrayal of a bad-boy torn between love and desire. Promising actor Peng is dealt another career setback after his turn in last year’s disastrous rom-com My DNA Says I Love You (基因決定我愛你). Judging from her unintentionally amusing yet still dreadful portrayal of Kitty’s 18-year-old self, Barbie Hsu shows that her years of soap opera experience have yet to qualify her as a serious actress.
Audiences sometimes assume that when a music video director turns his eye to the big screen, the end product will be all looks and no content. My So Called Love will not dispel that notion.
And so, in the wake of US President Donald Trump’s trip to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), all the experts on the Strait of Hormuz suddenly became experts on US-China-Taiwan relations. The Internet has certainly expanded human knowledge. Lots of these sudden experts made noise this week about Trump’s words after the meeting with PRC dictator Xi Jin-ping (習近平). Trump is going to sell out Taiwan! Longtime Taiwan commentator J. Michael Cole summed the situation up neatly in the Guardian: “We need to keep in mind that he has a tendency to say many things — sometimes contradicting himself within
Last week US President Donald Trump was asked by a reporter whether he would speak on the phone to the President of Taiwan. “l’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody. We have that situation very well in hand,” Trump said. This marked the second time in a couple of weeks he had said he would talk to the President of Taiwan. In 2016 he famously took a call from then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), when he was president-elect. Despite warnings that the apocalypse was nigh because of a phone call, the world quickly forgot about the conversation between two democratically-elected presidents.
May 25 to May 31 Few believed that apples could be cultivated on a commercial scale in Taiwan’s high mountains. When horticulturalist Cheng Chao-hsiung (程兆熊) first proposed the idea in 1955, both American and Taiwanese colleagues dismissed it as implausible, arguing that temperate fruit could not be reliably grown on a subtropical island, especially on rugged terrain. However, it was this terrain in the Central Mountain Range where many Chinese Civil War veterans were resettled in the late 1950s. With limited job prospects and no family in Taiwan, they were placed on cooperative farms aimed toward self-sufficiency. Some say the conditions
There is considerable frustration and confusion among many, both in Taiwan and abroad — including in Washington — as to why the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) seems so dead set on using their legislative leverage to slash defense spending and disrupt the ability of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration to function. Are they pawns of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)? Are they traitors? In reality, there are multiple reasons. In the first column in this series on this subject, “Donovan’s Deep Dives: How and why the TPP and KMT help Beijing” (Sat May 16, page 12), we examined three
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