During the 1980s, sex symbol Lu Hsiao-fen (陸小芬) was known for her bold behavior and suggestive performances. But in in Day Off (本日公休), her first film role in 23 years, Liu, 66, plays kind-hearted yet stubborn hairdresser A-Rui, who struggles with social and generational change.
Operating an old-school barber shop from her home, A-Rui has had the same customers for decades.
“You’re in charge of all of our heads,” one quips.
Photo courtesy of Vie Vision Pictures
A-Rui prides herself on knowing exactly what each customer wants without needing to ask, and her shop is also a place for locals to socialize. She personally calls each customer to remind them that it’s time for a haircut, and balks when her daughter A-Ling (Beatrice Fang, 方志友) — also a hairdresser — suggests an automatic scheduling notification app.
This story is based on director Fu Tien-yu’s (傅天余) experiences growing up in her mother’s hair salon. Many of the scenes actually happened, such as the old man who barged into the shop early in the morning to dye his hair black after dreaming of his dead wife scolding him about his appearance, or the teenager who was dragged back to the store by his angry mother after he got a trendy haircut to impress his girlfriend.
With decades of material to draw from, the slices of life in the salon and the way A-Rui runs it are vivid and humorous, providing an intimate peek into these establishments that can still be seen in older neighborhoods, but might not be around for much longer.
Photo courtesy of Vie Vision Pictures
Lu has turned down numerous movie roles over the years, but she says she was especially moved by this script. Having no hairdressing experience, she went through three months of training and also took acting classes to brush up on her skills.
Although Lu portrays A-Rui’s subdued but strong personality with nuance, the other characters in the film are one-dimensional, as if they exist just to highlight certain values. A-Rui’s rejection of modernity and insistence that customer relationships are more important than money is countered by the ambitious A-Ling, who plans to open an NT$100 salon that offers 10-minute, in-and-out services. She cannot believe that her mother is not charging extra to travel all the way to Changhua to cut the hair of a long-time customer who cannot move anymore.
A-Ling’s ex-husband A-Chuan (Fu Meng-po, 傅孟波), a mechanic, is like A-Rui, but he’s nice to a fault and keeps letting customers defer their payments for various reasons, even at one point lending his life savings to a friend in need. He also spends more time with A-Rui than the others — even though he and A-ling are divorced. People are usually more complex than this.
Photo courtesy of Vie Vision Pictures
Like the characters, the story itself is very straightforward and evenly paced, detailing a few transformative months in the family’s ordinary lives. It certainly has a lot of heart and offers a few laughs and tear jerking moments, but the plot and characters often come off as a motivational video for some forgotten past that probably never existed.
The biggest problem is the dialogue, which is too deliberate and moralistic. Cars and haircuts are often used as metaphors for the feelings of the characters, or to foreshadow subsequent events, which came of as unnatural.
The movie is still worth watching for Lu’s portrayal and the detailed depiction of a traditional establishment; it might even be the last time to see Lu on screen as she’s suggested in interviews that she is retiring for good.
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,
RSS