VIEW THIS PAGE After his powerful study of alienation and skinhead culture in This is England, Shane Meadows’ Somers Town might come as a bit of a letdown. It’s shot in black and white, runs for a mere 75 minutes, and is not really about anything at all. Just two lads in London, one a runaway from the Midlands, the other the son of a Polish construction worker, getting up to some high jinks because they have nothing better to do.
Despite it being a comparatively slight work, Somers Town reflects Meadows’ deep understanding of youth set adrift in a world that has no obvious place for them. According to Variety magazine, the film was financed by Eurostar, and the London-Paris service and the new terminal at St Pancras are prominent both physically and as a narrative backdrop to the story. There are brief moments when the director’s responsibilities to his sponsors intrude ever so slightly, but Meadows has too clear a conception of what he wants to allow Somers Town to descend into a piece of extended product placement.
Thomas Turgoose, who made a stunning debut in This Is England, is back as Tomo, a runaway from the Midlands who is trying his luck in London. He is far from being a likable scalawag, and is clearly a grifter to his bones, never missing an opportunity to see what he can get out of even the most casual of contacts. He meets up with Marek, who is in London to spend time with his father, a worker on the new Eurostar terminal. Marek too is at a loose end, as his father works days and drinks away the night with mates.
The relationship between the boys is never quite easy, even though Tomo talks his way into bunking in Marek’s room without his father’s knowledge. The relationship is enlivened by Graham, a shady businessman who is constantly sorting through his garage filled with assorted goods of unclear provenance, and Maria (Elisa Lasowski), a French woman working in London who becomes the object of a romantic fantasy for the two lads.
The surface lightness hovers over a darker world that is acknowledged but then generally ignored. Instead of drifting into the world of street violence, as Turgoose’s character did in This is England, the lads are allowed to create an ephemeral paradise amid the rough streets of inner city London. Short as it is, Somers Town has plenty to enjoy, not least Meadow’s outstanding ability to capture the elusive mood shifts and listless enthusiasms of his two young leads. VIEW THIS PAGE
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) hatched a bold plan to charge forward and seize the initiative when he held a protest in front of the Taipei City Prosecutors’ Office. Though risky, because illegal, its success would help tackle at least six problems facing both himself and the KMT. What he did not see coming was Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (將萬安) tripping him up out of the gate. In spite of Chu being the most consequential and successful KMT chairman since the early 2010s — arguably saving the party from financial ruin and restoring its electoral viability —
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
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