Foreign viewers at the Cannes premiere of Moneyboys (金錢男孩) may not have noticed the glaring incongruities that persist through the movie, but Taiwanese viewers certainly will. They’re apparent to the point that it’s difficult to enjoy the movie.
First of all, the entire film is obviously shot in Taiwan, but the plot is set in fictional locales in southern China, with most secondary characters, passersby and television announcers speaking in Beijing-accented Mandarin.
This melancholy tale revolves around gay sex workers in China and the unique challenges they face, especially regarding traditional expectations, including marriage, and the large-scale rural-to-urban migration of young people. This is an interesting topic, as it’s taboo in China and significantly different from the LGBTQ situation in Taiwan. Shooting it in Taiwan was probably a way for this story to be told, as Chinese authorities do not welcome films depicting overt homosexuality. And it’s quite explicit in Moneyboys, especially the sex scenes.
Photo courtesy of Cola Films
Which brings us to the second problem. Given the tensions between Taipei and Beijing, it might raise a few eyebrows for Taiwanese to see their homeland portrayed as part of China. Politics aside, however, CB Yi, the Chinese-Austrian director who is using a pseudonym for fear of reprisals against relatives still living in China, has made some other questionable decisions.
Take language, for example. Despite his superb acting, which earned him a Golden Horse nomination, Taiwanese lead actor Kai Ko (柯震東) delivers his lines as A-fei in an unnatural Mandarin accent, while using vocabulary that’s more common in China. So does the other Taiwanese principal actor, JC Lin (林哲熹), who portrays A-fei’s former lover Xiao-lai.
This just scratches the surface of the linguistic trainwreck. At one point, A-fei returns to his home village, where everyone speaks Hoklo (also known as Taiwanese) — except for his father and childhood friend A-long (Bai Yufan, 白宇帆), both of whom inexplicably speak with strong Beijing accents and obviously cannot speak the local tongue. This is just sloppy, especially since A-long eventually takes on a significant role in the film.
Photo courtesy of Cola Films
Perhaps A-fei’s father moved to the village later in life, but it is simply not believable that two people of the same generation from the same village speak with radically different accents.
The city that A-fei lives in feels like Taiwan at one moment and China in another; one simply can’t just package one as another as the scenery and atmosphere in the two places are markedly different. It doesn’t take much to realize that the street scenes are in Taipei and Keelung, with landmarks that give the exact locations away. Adding Beijing-accented background chatter simply does not cut it. Yi has more control over the shiny indoor bars, traditional gardens and other interior scenes that feel very much like China.
All of this wouldn’t be a problem if the target audience was purely Western, especially when the highly stylized Eastern aesthetics and cinematography are amped up to accentuate the foreignness of the settings. But especially as a co-Taiwanese production, these issues should have been considered more carefully.
Anyhow, Ko should still be praised for his intense and heartfelt performance as a complex character who is torn between worlds. He toils in risky, illicit work to support his family back home, but they shun him due to the rumors of what he does. He starts a relationship with A-long, but cannot forget his former lover Xiao-lai, a gay man now married with children — a phenomenon in China that has gained much attention in recent years. Ko struggles between his work and his emotional needs, especially for romance, and seemingly engages in self-sabotage.
Bai also holds his own as the more idealistic, playful counterpart to Ko, and the two have great chemistry and pretty much carry the film.
Despite its bright color palette and bursts of energy, however, Moneyboys is more of a contemplative, drawn-out affair that dives deep into the psyche of a character stuck in a world that he struggles to thrive in. In a vacuum, it’s a decent effort that provides a narrow yet empathetic look at a subject seldom discussed in China. Still, the aforementioned distractions are too much to bear.
What was the population of Taiwan when the first Negritos arrived? In 500BC? The 1st century? The 18th? These questions are important, because they can contextualize the number of babies born last month, 6,523, to all the people on Taiwan, indigenous and colonial alike. That figure represents a year on year drop of 3,884 babies, prefiguring total births under 90,000 for the year. It also represents the 26th straight month of deaths exceeding births. Why isn’t this a bigger crisis? Because we don’t experience it. Instead, what we experience is a growing and more diverse population. POPULATION What is Taiwan’s actual population?
After Jurassic Park premiered in 1993, people began to ask if scientists could really bring long-lost species back from extinction, just like in the hit movie. The idea has triggered “de-extinction” debates in several countries, including Taiwan, where the focus has been on the Formosan clouded leopard (designated after 1917 as Neofelis nebulosa brachyura). National Taiwan Museum’s (NTM) Web site describes the Formosan clouded leopard as “a subspecies endemic to Taiwan…it reaches a body length of 0.6m to 1.2m and tail length of 0.7m to 0.9m and weighs between 15kg and 30kg. It is entirely covered with beautiful cloud-like spots
For the past five years, Sammy Jou (周祥敏) has climbed Kinmen’s highest peak, Taiwu Mountain (太武山) at 6am before heading to work. In the winter, it’s dark when he sets out but even at this hour, other climbers are already coming down the mountain. All of this is a big change from Jou’s childhood during the Martial Law period, when the military requisitioned the mountain for strategic purposes and most of it was off-limits. Back then, only two mountain trails were open, and they were open only during special occasions, such as for prayers to one’s ancestors during Lunar New Year.
A key feature of Taiwan’s environmental impact assessments (EIA) is that they seldom stop projects, especially once the project has passed its second stage EIA review (the original Suhua Highway proposal, killed after passing the second stage review, seems to be the lone exception). Mingjian Township (名間鄉) in Nantou County has been the site of rising public anger over the proposed construction of a waste incinerator in an important agricultural area. The township is a key producer of tea (over 40 percent of the island’s production), ginger and turmeric. The incinerator project is currently in its second stage EIA. The incinerator
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