Adapted from Essay Liu’s (劉梓潔) story of the same title, which won the Lin Rung San Literary Award (林榮三文學獎) in 2006, this feature debut, co-directed by Liu and veteran film and television director Wang Yu-lin (王育麟), takes the traditional Taiwanese mourning ritual as its focal point.
Seven Days in Heaven (父後七日), an entertainingly absurd comedy and affecting drama about death and how we cope with it, opens with Mei, played by movie producer and scriptwriter Wang Li-wen (王莉雯), returning to her hometown in Changhua (彰化) after her father (veteran actor Chang Chia-nien (張嘉年), known as Tai Pao (太保)), passes away.
A Taoist seven-day mourning ritual is held, but despite their loss, Mei and her brother Da-zhi (theater actor and director Chen Chia-hsiang (陳家祥)) have little time to grieve as their days are filled with elaborate formalities involving a professional weeper, a scripture-chanting crew, mourning clothes, straw sandals and much more.
Luckily a distant relative, Taoist priest Yi, played by theater professional Wu Peng-fon (吳朋奉), is on hand to ensure that etiquette is followed.
Meanwhile, the deceased’s life is gradually revealed through Mei’s flashbacks of seemingly insignificant yet meaningful moments shared between daughter and father.
Soon, the ritual is over, and Mei returns to her life in Taipei.
The film ends with a coda that finds Mei, several months later, at Hong Kong airport waiting for her flight to take off. Suddenly, she is seized with grief, crushed by the thought that there is no need to buy duty-free cigarettes for her father as she always did when returning home from trips abroad.
Seven Days in Heaven gains much of its charm from exposing the elaborateness of traditional Taiwanese funereal customs with low-key humor.
A nameless character in Liu’s original work, the Taoist priest acts as a guide who helps the brother and sister, as well as the audience, navigate the meticulous set of rules that govern everything from when to show and not to show grief, to the items the deceased needs for the afterworld.
The result is a series of genuinely humorous moments that sees the daughter using toothpaste foam on her mouth to mimic crying and the son placing pornographic books, which are, apparently, in great demand in the next life, in the coffin.
To the directing duo’s credit, they neatly convey a sense of absurdity and construct a slightly surreal atmosphere, accentuated by the creative use of colors and music, such as in the opening scene when the priest prepares for the ritual in a room outlandishly toned red and orange with Hava Nagila (“Let Us Rejoice”), a Hebrew folk song performed at Jewish weddings, playing in the background.
Liu and Wang show considerable talent in revealing the daughter’s inner emotions through the polished story, which swings smoothly between humor and serious insight.
In one well-executed sequence, which begins with a comic scene involving the digital manipulation of a photograph of the father to be used at the funeral, a flashback shows Dad teaching Mei how to ride a motorcycle on her 18th birthday and ends with a scene in which the daughter carries the dead father’s photograph on the back of her bike.
Interestingly, the filmmakers chose to use nonprofessional actors, mostly Liu’s neighbors, relatives and friends from the writer’s hometown in Changhua, which imbues the production with a sense of realism and authenticity and heightens the impression that the story is about real people experiencing the absurdities of everyday life.
Seven Days in Heaven is an eloquent example of how movies that are firmly rooted in Taiwanese culture can pluck heartstrings that Hollywood films can’t.
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