Tenderly sadomasochistic and defiant toward politically correct views on gender politics, Chinese director Liu Fendou’s (劉奮鬥) second feature Ocean Flame (一半海水，一半火燄) takes the bad-guy-corrupting-innocent-girl story to the extreme with this tale of a tortured love affair between a ruthless criminal and an innocent waitress.
The film plays out in flashbacks as
ex-con Wang Yao (Liao Fan, 廖凡) barges in on a family after being released from prison. A small-time criminal who ran a prostitution ring with friends before his incarceration, Wang made a comfortable living by blackmailing male customers in hotel-room sex scams.
To the unscrupulous Wang, it is love at first sight with attractive young waitress Li Chuan (Monica Mok, 莫小奇). The two are soon consumed with sex and passion, captivatingly shown in a sex scene on a glittering, empty beach.
Yet as Wang introduces Li to his sordid world and lists her as one of his working girls, the pair’s desperate addiction to love inevitably paves the way for self-destruction.
The third big-screen adaptation of renowned Chinese writer Wang Shuo’s (王朔) novel of the same title (previous versions include the 2001 US film Love the Hard Way starring Adrien Brody), Liu’s violent and erotically charged film creates an enclosed world in which the characters, twisted and bursting with overwrought emotions, swing between unsettling sadomasochism and brutal romanticism, the contrasting feelings suggested by the film’s title.
Chinese actor Liao possesses enough dangerous charisma to help him get away with the sometimes overwritten dialogue and come off as an almost enchanting abuser. Newcomer Mok has been nominated for best leading actress at the upcoming Golden Horse Awards (金馬獎) for her daring and intense performance. The cameos by Hong Kong veteran actors, however, feel superfluous to the narrative.
Exactingly arranged and masterfully crafted in terms of filmmaking, Ocean Flame derives its charm, or shortcoming to some, from a pronounced feel of theatricality and staged emotions that will attract art-house moviegoers with dark characters whose pride and despair lead to self-destruction.
Taiwan’s English education system is being pulled apart by three opposing forces. Bilingual Nation 2030 pulls students toward English and global communication. Artificial Intelligence (AI) readiness pulls them toward digital judgment, verification and AI-mediated work. But Taiwan’s old exam culture pulls them back toward memorization, grammar drills, timed reading and correct answers. If the education system keeps using old exams to define success, it risks producing graduates who are neither genuinely bilingual nor genuinely AI-ready, but trained for tasks machines can already perform. The first force is Bilingual Nation 2030. Launched in 2018, the policy aimed to “help Taiwan’s workforce connect
It seems every few days one bumps into one of those “real man” comments in which Taiwan is urged to “face reality” or similar, and “make a deal,” with the speaker implying that soon it will be too late. “Deal” advocates always present themselves as having a superior grip on reality, and the manly ability to make the “hard choice.” Their testosterone-laden language often echoes that of Taiwan sellout advocates. Note that such commentary always specifies a process (“make a deal, work with, make progress”), never the end state of what occupation by a violent authoritarian colonialist state will entail. In
There are shadowy cabals plotting to sell out Taiwan to be annexed by China, by invasion if necessary. Fortunately, they are buffoons. In 2019, former Bamboo Union gangster and founder of the China Unification Promotion Party (CUPP), Chang An-le (張安樂, colorfully known as “White Wolf”), led a protest at the Legislative Yuan against comments made by then-premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) that in the event of an attack by China, he would never surrender, but would protect the nation by fighting to the end, even if he only had a broom. Chang had party members bring a wooden casket that they
June 1 to June 7 "If all Taiwanese were as afraid of dying as you, then what would happen?” Physician Shih Chiang-nan (施江南) reportedly said this to his wife Chen Chiao-tung (陳焦桐) after she urged him to stop intervening on behalf of Taiwanese soldiers stranded overseas after serving in the Japanese Army during World War II. Shih had clashed with high-ranking officials over the issue, engaged in several heated arguments with Taiwan governor-general Chen Yi (陳儀) and allegedly shouted at general Ko Yuan-fen (柯遠芬), chief of staff of the Taiwan Garrison Command, over
RSS