Missing bees, human extinction, lost objects and the departure of loved ones: Disappearance takes many forms in Honey Pupu (消失打看), the second feature film by prolific commercial and music-video director Chen Hung-i (陳宏一).
This thread is one of the very few things that are clear in the meticulously crafted visual wonder, which is filled with enigmatic characters who tiptoe through an elusive narrative that vacillates between youthful love and an elegy of loss.
Radio show hostess Vicky (Peggy Tseng, 曾珮瑜) searches for her lover Dog (Lee Ta-chi, 李大齊), who disappeared without a trace. While investigating she meets Cola, played by Chiu Sheng-yi (邱勝翊, better known as Prince, 王子), Money (Zaizai Lin, 林辰唏) and Assassin, played by Lin Po-sheng (林柏昇, aka Kid from boy band Circus).
Photo Courtesy of Good Day Films
Cola offers to help find Dog, but the only clue to his disappearance is a floppy disc that cannot be read by today’s computers. He is enchanted by a purple-haired girl named Money. Their tentative romance enrages Assassin, the young woman’s passionate and hot-tempered boyfriend.
The group’s search for Dog leads them to Playing (Nikki Hsieh, 謝欣穎), a femme fatale who has her eyes on Assassin. Heartbroken by Money’s love for Cola, Assassin succumbs to Playing’s charms one night and commits suicide the next day. Despite the death, hope is raised toward the end of the film when our youthful protagonists enter a CGI-enhanced paradise where all lost memories, objects and loved ones can be found.
Chen creates a sealed world in Honey Pupu in which the young and attractive wander through a dreamy Taipei landscape, appear and disappear without reason while uttering words that hint at an intellectual depth, but are opaque and inarticulate. The film brims with exquisite images, hauntingly beautiful music and the alluring faces of the stars. Fortunately, the film has an emotional weight that elevates it above the stylish void that filled the director’s feature debut, Candy Rain (花吃了那女孩).
In Honey Pupu, buildings, people and things vanish as the protagonists try to cling onto something substantial. Vicky captures the world with a film camera, Assassin trades old objects and used goods, and Cola records the disappearing world with his drawings. Yet their efforts are in vain, and what they hold dear seems as ephemeral and fragile as their youth. In the hands of Chen, the world those hip youngsters live in is dainty and dreamy, but the specter of loss looms large. The director takes a playful approach to the film, which is amusingly enhanced by the ghostly sounds made by Chang Wu-wu (張午午) from electronica group Telephone Booth (電話亭).
But as the love triangle emerges in the second half of the film, Chen resorts to a plot that recalls a typical young romance, nearly spoiling the mysterious charm that has been built up through all the visual exuberance.
With glittering imagery, beautiful sounds and scant narrative, Honey Pupu is, if you surrender to its whimsical thoughts and dance-like flow, a lyrical poem. As one of the film’s characters says: “If there is no logic, what disappears can back again.”
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