Salli (莎莉,  Lien Chien-Hung, 2023)

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Romance and tradition collide when a middle-aged chicken farmer is unwittingly duped by an online dating scam in Lien Chien-Hung’s gentle dramedy Salli (莎莉). Though everyone tells her the man she thinks she’s talking to on the internet probably isn’t real, Hui-jun (Esther Liu) continues to believe in the possibility of love and a more sophisticated world than that she knows from her rural small-town where everyone knows everyone’s business and she’s looked on as something of a pariah for being unmarried at 38.

Her busybody aunt (Yang Li-yin) in particular is keen that she get married as soon as possible and keeps bringing photos of eligible bachelors most of whom are more than 20 years older than her or just a bit strange. The aunt has also somewhat taken over in the upcoming wedding of Hui-jun’s younger brother Wei-hong (Austin Lin) to the daughter of a local pineapple farmer. She’s had a fengshui master come round and declare that Hui-jun’s bedroom is the best one for the new couple to sleep in so she’s been turfed out, while another fortune teller suggests that as she is unmarried herself Hui-jun shouldn’t even attend the ceremony otherwise the couple will end up arguing for the rest of their lives. Though Wei-hong tells her he doesn’t care about any of that and it’s important to him she attend his wedding, Hui-jun can’t help feeling a little guilty and in the way.

What the aunt doesn’t seem to consider is that after their parents died in an accident, Hui-jun in effect became everyone’s mother which made it impossible for her to have the kind of experiences one needs to get married. She even ended up caring for the daughter of her older brother who abandoned the family after the end of his marriage, though he later took her back to Shanghai where he lives with a much younger Mainland fiancée. Xin-ru has returned home in search of maternal comfort, but Hui-jun knows she will soon have to leave again and she’ll be on her own. It’s Xin-ru who sets her up on an internet dating app explaining that she uses them for “fun” though once Hui-jun starts chatting to “Martin”, a Parisian gallery owner, she can’t help but succumb to romantic fantasy. 

There are those who pity Hui-jin or mock her for being taken in by such an obvious scam, even considering giving Martin her life savings for the downpayment on a flat where they could live together in Paris when he proposes to her after a short period of text-based communication facilitated by AI translation. But Hui-jun is lonely and is just wants to feel loved and valued in a way she obviously doesn’t by her family members who are obsessed with her marital status. In any case, it’s through her imaginary romance with Martin that she begins to come into herself, to think about what it is she wants out of life including whether to not she actually wants to get married, and embrace a new sense of confidence as a person in her own right.

A disaster at home sends her to Paris, alone, hoping to clarify her situation which she eventually does though not in the way anyone might have expected. An elderly woman gives her a piece of life advice that after a divorce and several years of unsatisfying dating experiences, she realised that she just do things on her own and that was okay. What the opportunity affords her is the chance to rediscover herself as distinct from her roles as a sister, aunt, and surrogate mother and wonder if she might be happy enough with her chickens and the dog for company. Filled with a gentle humour and an affection for small-town, rural life in Taiwan if also a yearning for a little sophistication, the film has boundless sympathy for its put upon middle-aged heroine as trapped as some of the chickens in her coop by outdated patriarchal thinking and longing to strut free like the white cockerel she seems to treat almost as a friend. Taichung may not have the Eiffel Tower, but it has its charms and as Hui-jun is discovering the freedom to decide on her own future.

Salli screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)

Memories of His Scent (においが眠るまで, Kahori Higashi, 2024)

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The link between scent and memory is incredibly strong to the extent that they are often inextricable from one another. For Hinoki, what she fears is that her father’s scent will fade from the world around her and she’ll no longer be able to feel his presence either externally or within herself. She tries to recapture and recreate it artificially only to realise that there was a crucial component that she never thought to include but was always central to her memories of her late father.

We can see the way she immortalises him in her dream sequence in which she walks through a gallery looking at a series of small exhibits marking out her father’s life until his hospitalisation at age 45 and subsequent death from illness. The last box appears empty but turns out to contain a simulacrum of his scent in the same way some museums offer the opportunity to experience what it may have felt like to live in a place through breathing in its ambient smells. It’s this sense of intimacy that Hinoki longs to recapture as she attempts to deal with her grief and the series of upheavals to her life in the wake of her father’s death including closing his coffee shop and bean roastery. She’s horrified that her mother’s put his favourite apron in the to go pile as if she were throwing away an essential part of him she can’t recover. It’s this along with a diary dropped off by the owner of a mini theatre he used to deliver coffee to that sends Hinoki on a summer holiday road trip adventure looking for traces of her father in the places he visited and trying to identify that behind a poetic entry at the end of the diary. 

The film then doubles as another in a series of films elegising the dying culture of boutique cinemas in small towns often catering to small but dedicated audiences who have formed a kind of community around their love of film. These smaller screens generally show older and indie films and are key to the success of independent filmmakers whose work often wouldn’t be shown in larger multiplexes, yet audiences have often not returned after the enforced break of the pandemic era while they also face competition from streaming and other forms of entertainment. The first cinema Hinoki visits is closing down in 42 days though she marvels at the scent and atmosphere of this retro space which has its own elegiac quality. Whilst there she also coincidentally runs to a scent scientist who gives her some pointers about how to preserve and recreate her father’s scent before it fades. By the time she reaches the end of her journey the final cinema has already closed down and rather depressingly been replaced by an entirely empty open air car park. 

Even so what she begins to realise is that nothing really disappears and experiences can be recreated to an extent as she discovers when they put a movie on in the car park leading to a very personal epiphany. The people she meets along her way teach her various things such as the importance of clearly stating how you feel while there’s still time even if her best friend’s attempt to do just that doesn’t quite go to plan. A single father raising a small daughter brings back painful memories for her of her own childhood and her father’s now continuing absence while also reminding her that those experiences live on in her memory along with the various things her father taught her throughout her life. 

Though suffused with melancholy, the film is ultimately uplifting in its determination that life goes on and nothing really disappears. Originally diffident and describing herself as someone who doesn’t particularly like interacting with others, through her partly solo road trip Hinoki learns to open herself up to the world around her along with its myriad fragrances and what they say about the people who inhabit a place. She thinks she’s looking for her father, but she’s really looking for herself and the path towards the rest of her life lived in his absence while discovering the richness of life as its lived in addition to that which has passed.

Memories of His Scent screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Unborn Soul (渡, Zhou Zhou, 2024)

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When a woman receives the news that her unborn child has a 70% chance of being born with a disability she finds herself confronted by a series of uncomfortable social attitudes and prejudices while trying to decide what is best both for herself and her child in Zhou Zhou’s empathetic drama, Unborn Soul (渡, dù). Touching on issues such as the demands of caring for someone with a profound disability and patriarchal notions of needing to continue the family line, the film sees its heroine more or less isolated in her refusal to be pressured into an abortion she isn’t convinced is the right decision. 

Though now relaxed, the legacy of the One Child Policy may in part be influencing the way people think about raising children and the ageing society with Qing’s father-in-law insisting on a “perfect child” to inherit their family name. Qing has been the sole carer for her 60-year-old uncle who has cerebral palsy and an intellectual disability since her grandmother died and it seems to be in the back of her mind to wonder who might be around to care for her child when she is no longer able to if they were indeed to be born with a disability that prevented them from living an independent life. Because of her closeness with her uncle, she has also has a more empathetic view of living with a disability than those around her and believes it is wrong to think that the baby is better off not being born having heard from him that he is glad to be alive.

Her husband however leans towards an abortion admitting that he is not really prepared to care for a disabled child for the rest of his life while his father outright objects to the idea of having someone with a disability in their family. Laying bare the patriarchal attitudes that surround her, Qing is essentially silenced by her husband and father-in-law who at one point says he’s sick of women like her who “can’t communicate” and won’t do what they’re told. Her husband is also in a sense trapped by this patriarchal system in that his father heavily pressures him to force his wife to have an abortion until she finally files for divorce. He has a clause put into the agreement that if Qing insists on going ahead with the pregnancy the child will have no connection to his family regardless of whether or not it is born with a disability. 

While all of this is going on, the baby seems to narrate its thoughts on the present drama while lamenting the suffering he feels himself to be causing to his mother. The question arises of whether or not the baby would wish to be born which is not a question anyone could answer and in any case perhaps he would end up feeling it would have been better to not to have been even if he were born able-bodied and with no intellectual disabilities. In an attempt to reassure herself, Qing visits a home for disabled adults and encounters a man with cerebral palsy who has got a job as a masseur and is living a fulfilling and independent life but is also confronted by the fact that many of these people have been abandoned by families who feared the stigma of disability. 

The implications of the film’s ending maybe slightly uncomfortable even if they reflect Qing’s nature as a true mother who thought only of her child even while the film is otherwise critical of an overly efficient medical system which tries to usher Qing towards an abortion without really considering that her choice to give birth to the child might be valid which also displays a lack of respect for the lives of disabled people. Shot in a classic 4:3 the film flits between theatricality and detachment while shifting into a strangely dreamlike aesthetic with its commentary from the unborn baby who certainly seems quite a sophisticated thinker for one so young. In any case, the decision is in a sense taken out of Qing’s hands leaving her with little choice other than to accept the hand that fate has dealt her while otherwise isolated from a cold and rational society.

Unborn Soul screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Sayon’s Bell (サヨンの鐘, Hiroshi Shimizu, 1943)

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Like all directors of his era, Hiroshi Shimizu made a series of National Policy propaganda films though he was often able to circumvent their requirements by focussing on themes that interested him more directly such as teamwork or childhood. Sayon’s Bell (サヨンの鐘, Sayon no Kane) is however an unavoidably propagandist film filled with praise for the Japanese empire and to modern eyes incredibly problematic in its depictions of the indigenous peoples of Taiwan many of whom did “volunteer” to serve in the Japanese imperial army a notable example being that of Li Kuang-hui who was the last Japanese soldier to be discovered hiding in the Indonesian jungle in 1974 having been recruited from the Amis people.

The film opens with a lengthy series of title cards explaining that the film is dedicated to the Takasago Volunteers, “Takasago” being, aside from the title of a famous noh play, the name Japanese gave to the indigenous people of Taiwan believing them to have been “civilised” by Japanese rule. Thus in the opening sequences, we see the role of the Japanese military personnel as essentially paternal. They are policemen, doctors, teachers, instructors, and directors of construction who are dedicated to raising the aboriginal people to level of Japanese citizens through forced assimilation. 

Inspired by a real life incident that also inspired a popular song of an indigenous woman who drowned in a river while carrying the belongings of a Japanese policeman, the film uses the titular Sayon as an arbiter of Japaneseness enhanced by the casting of Li Koran, later known as Shirley Yamaguchi/Yamaguchi Yoshiko, who was actually Japanese but presented as Chinese in the propaganda cinema of the time having been born in Machuria and fluent in Mandarin. Somewhat awkwardly given that Sayon is supposed to be an indigenous woman herself, she is the one schooling the local children in how to be Japanese reminding them that they should “use Japanese properly” rather than their indigenous language and praising one young boy for abandoning his indigenous name and adopting that of “Taro” instead. Japanese rule in Taiwan was not as oppressive as it was in the other parts of the empire and they did have some local support thanks to their investments in infrastructure and modernisation. Nevertheless, they did attempt to enforce the use of the Japanese language and the taking of Japanese names though it should also be noted that the KMT government did exactly the same thing only with Mandarin when it gained control of the island. 

That aside the indigenous people were often treated poorly in comparison to the rest of the of the population and we can see that the framing of them is often racist and derogatory such as when an abandoned baby is taken to the police and they remark that the indigenous community have too many children and they all look alike. The eligible men from the village, including Sayon’s love interest Saburo (Hatsu Shimazaki), have been sent to Japan for a kind of militarist re-education and are eagerly awaiting their opportunity to serve the emperor in the army. Though this may seem surprising, it apparently reflects a real fervour among indigenous men who were convinced to enlist by the money on offer and a campaign of rumours that suggested men who did not do so were unmanly and therefore unattractive to the local women. When the first round of volunteers is selected, a great amount of time is given to consoling the men who were not chosen many of whom protest and plead to volunteer their services. 

In an effort to inject some drama the film includes a love triangle between Sayon, Saburo, and Mona (Kenzo Nakagawa) who is said to be moody out of jealousy and unrequited love for Sayon but later reveals he was only jealous of Saburo in respect of playing second fiddle to him as a worthy man of the village again eager to serve the Japanese emperor. Led by Li Koran, there are several renditions of a patriotic war song singing the praises of the Taiwanese army that read that like a call to arms, though the audience for this film is certainly domestic and it seems unlikely that it would be screened in these mountain villages in Taiwan.

The first part of the film is basically ethnography featuring picturesque scenes of the local scenery and footage of the indigenous people living the “simple, peaceful life” patronisingly described in the opening titles while there is some exoticisation of the aboriginal culture in the elaborate costumes and scenes of indigenous rituals. Perhaps the most shocking aspect is that Sayon is encouraged to break a traditional taboo by entering a sacred lake where women are forbidden to go lest they anger the god Uttofu. With her new cultural re-education, Sayon thinks Uttofu is a myth and goes to the lake to help Saburo assess it because the Japanese are planning to drain it to create a rice paddy. For this she is expected to drown herself in the water to placate Uttofu and is urged to do so by the tribal elders with the Japanese basically agreeing with them deciding that they should catch an animal to sacrifice and if that doesn’t work, while it’s “unfortunate”, Sayon should indeed hurl herself into the lake if the for the good of the empire rather than Uttofu. 

It is quite odd to think that the Japanese military personnel would go along with human sacrifice rather than clamp down on a practice they would otherwise term backward, though in that light it’s impossible not to see her later death by drowning as a rejection of the “modernity” the colonial authorities represent and a re-assertion of indigenous culture. The bell referenced in the title refers to one given to the village to commemorate the incident bearing an inscription of Sayon’s name. When the KMT gained control of Taiwan, they erased the inscription on the bell and removed it as a symbol of Japanese rule though it was later restored after the end of martial law and the monument re-erected beside the bridge which was also named “Sayon’s Bridge” in a evocation of the complicated relationships between the three nations. The film is however rather uncomplicated in its themes which to modern eyes prove extremely unpalatable despite the often beautiful cinematography capturing the idyllic Taiwanese countryside.

Sayon’s Bell screens at the Museum of the Moving Image May 11 as part of Hiroshi Shimizu Part I: The Shochiku Years.

Nothingness (無, Kim Gap Sik, 2024)

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What are we without our violent impulses? In Kim Gap Sik’s sci-fi-inflected noir Nothingness (無, 무, Mu), a shady corporation has produced a new drug that inhibits the tendency for violence with those unwilling to take it exiled to the “City of Dreams”. But what does it mean to live with inhibition, and can we really call ourselves free if we are prevented from acting on our baser instincts?

At least, it seems to be slowly eating away at former policeman Young-il (Kim Yeong-taek) who has been placed on suspension and forced to take drug R-3 after dispatching violent serial killer and former childhood friend Jong-ha (Hwang Sung-woo). Young-il is now in a relationship with Jong-ha’s former girlfriend Yeon-jeong (Shim Areum-byul) but lives a depressed and aimless life devoid of purpose or meaning. Dangling the prospect of reinstatement, his former partner informs him that Jong-ha’s DNA has been found at a crime scene hinting that he is alive and has escaped from the City of Dreams to return to Seoul to enact his revenge.

Through his investigations,Young-il comes to discover that Jong-ha is part of a group that apparently intends to cast the world into “nothingness”. Jong-ha claims that he is now someone who has no name, hometown, or nationality and has transgressed the borders of what is considered to be a meaningful life. Young-il meanwhile struggles with himself, gravitating towards suicide while his doctor ignores his complaints. Resentful that he has been unfairly cast out of the police force he obsesses over the idea of reinstatement in part as a bridge to a happier life with Yeon-jeong but also finds himself conflicted.

After all, he’s told Jong-ha wants to “turn the world into nothingness”, but arguably so do those who invented R-3, reducing him to a zombie-like state of numbness and despair out of fear that he may at some point commit an act of violence. The creator of R-3, for whom Yeon-jeong works, explains that the people have traded freedom for security though she is becoming convinced that what he cares about is lining his own pockets indifferent to the side effects of his wonder drug including the suicidal ideation that plagues Young-il. Young-il suggests taking a trip back to their hometown, but Yeon-jeong is against it, certain that everything there has changed. A fugitive from City of Dreams he encounters tells him those like him who refuse to take the drug have lost their hometowns or perhaps never really had one in this harsh and judgemental world from which they have already been exiled for insisting on their freedom over the enforced authoritarianism that revokes their power to resist. 

The man also warns him that his former partner and other officers routinely collect protection money in the area and if he’s reinstated as a policeman he probably he will too robbing him of a position of righteousness in his quest to neutralise serial killer Jong-ha who is now targeting employees of the company that manufactures R-3. Accusing her boss of wanting to turn the world into obedient dogs, Yeon-jeong begins to reconsider her commitment to her work pleased by the “violent” sight of a child stomping in the park and no longer able to go along with the kind of side effects that plague Young-il or the wilful suppression of human nature.

As the threat of a nuclear strike hovers in the background, Kim conjures a sense of existential dread caught between those attaining a zen-like sate of emptiness and those like Young-il unable to escape their own despair. Seemingly inspired by Blade Runner and classic noir cinema, Kim uses voiceover and a jazz synth score to bring out the neo noir themes while often filming in an intense darkness that echoes the murkiness of the world inhabited by Young-il, a lost soul searching for himself in a world of decreasing autonomy. Meanwhile, his mirror image Jong-ha takes on an almost mythical quality as an embodiment of nothingness and destructive nihilism that in itself becomes means of resisting a corrupt society. Making the most of its modest budget, Kim’s elegantly lensed noir presents a bleak vision of a near future world coloured only by despair and emptiness in which there is no freedom or safety and as Young-il is reminded cares little for men like him.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

Inch Forward (走れない人の走り方, Su Yu-Chun, 2023)

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Why does everything always go wrong just when it was about to go right? Everything has fallen into place for director Kiriko’s upcoming indie film but suddenly she finds herself experiencing a series of crises that are perhaps a bit of a wakeup call teaching her a few things about herself as well as the process of filmmaking. The latest film to tackle the perils of the independent movie scene, Inch Forward (走れない人の走り方, Hashirenai hito no Hashiri-kata) never shies away from the difficulties involved but does suggest they can be overcome with humility and a willingness to get creative.

Part of the problem is Kiriko’s difficulty in making decisions and lack of clarity over her role as a director. Her producer, Takimoto, tries to keep her grounded by pointing out places where the script will be difficult to film and dealing with the actors, but also tells her that she should have a better idea of the message she intends her film to carry and be prepared to answer questions about the script from her cast members. But Kiriko says she doesn’t really intend the film to have a message and thinks creating a character is an actor’s job not a director’s. Whenever Takimoto asks her to reconsider something, Kiriko childishly answers that she’ll think about it probably without really intending to.

But her irresponsible behaviour causes problems for others, particularly when she messes up the company car during a bit of unauthorised location hunting, or fails to shut the front door properly allowing her pregnant roommate’s pet cat to escape and thereby sending her into an early labour. It’s only after these series of crises that Kiriko begins to understand that she needs to make amends and be more considerate in future if she wants to continue receiving help and support from those around her. After all, you can’t make a film all on your own.

Ironically enough she describes her film as like a road movie but on foot about people going to the same place over and over again. Even one of her crew members asks her why it is indie filmmakers like to end at the sea hinting at her screenplay being slightly cliché even as she tries to think her way out of the problem. At a particularly low point, she has a vision of the film being taken away from her as her (all male) crew members and Takimoto remark on how useless she is and vow to take over their section from her. She also has an obsession with her horoscope which is usually a little negative further deepening her lack of confidence and general sense of despair. 

“Don’t worry, just believe in yourself and move forward’” one of her horoscope ads advises and it might indeed by good advice for an indie filmmaker. Learning to be a little more considerate of those around her, she begins to benefit from their help and advice rather than rejecting it in her own insecurity. Despite all of the constraints her friend tells her that she should make something authentic, what she actually wants to do rather than cynically doing what seems the most advantageous, but what’s really important is a sense of balance. As Takimoto told her, she needs to learn to prioritise rather than expect to get everything she wants and be realistic about what’s achievable while still aiming for the film she wants to make. 

Then again in the cinema scenes which bookend the film Su implies that the audience weren’t particularly impressed or perhaps confused by her road movie that doesn’t go anywhere. One audience member was so deeply asleep they had to be woken by an usher. Nevertheless, to overcome her problems Kiriko has to take the lead in more ways than one asserting control over her project but also prepared to work with others, listen to their suggestions, and make firm decisions as they inch forward towards their goal. Warm and quirky, Su’s lighthearted dramedy never shies away from the difficulties of indie filmmaking but finally resolves that it is possible to overcome them with a little mutual respect and solidarity between those on the other side of the screen.

Inch Forward screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.

Original trailer (no subtitles)

The Fallen Bridge (断.桥, Li Yu, 2022)

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Li Yu’s mystery thriller The Fallen Bridge (断.桥. duàn.qiáo) finds itself at a series of contradictions in the modern China and its film industry. The film was an unexpected box office success, though largely because it falls into a new category of boy band film in starring TFBoys’ Karry Wang locking in an audience of ardent fans much as Jackson Yee’s presence in Better Days had though it also plays into ongoing anti-corruption theme in recent cinema while simultaneously adopting a mildly positive stance towards whistleblowers if specifically within the field of construction.

It is of course an unescapable fact that hypercapitalistic working practices and ingrained corruption have led to numerous public safety failures with bridge collapses unfortunately a fairly common occurrence. This one is particularly problematic as a skeleton is discovered encased in the concrete during the cleanup effort. From the way it’s posed, it appears the man may have been buried alive. A preserved piece of paper found in a bag accompanying the skeleton states his intention to take his concerns to the head of the construction project that the structure is unsafe and should be entirely rebuilt. Of course, that would be incredibly expensive, embarrassing, and disadvantageous to others who have used the bridge as a way of forging connections with important people.

The bridge’s collapse is therefore also symbolic in pointing to the fracturing instability of these relationships along with that between college friends Zhu Fengzheng (Fan Wei), the project manager, and Wen Liang (Mo Chunlin), the would-be-whistleblower. Fengzheng has also been raising Liang’s daughter Xiaoyu (Ma Sichun) who was 12 at the time her father disappeared after seemingly being disowned by her mother who was under the impression he had runaway with his mistress. Now in her 20s and an architecture student, Xiaoyu becomes determined to learn the truth even as she begins to suspect Fengzheng who has otherwise become a second father to her and does at least seem to care for her as a daughter while his own son is apparently living in Australia. Teaming up with a fugitive, Meng Chao (Karry Wang), on the run for killing the man who raped his sister, she begins plotting her revenge while a police investigation into the bridge collapse and an additional suspicious death otherwise seems to flounder.

Though it may not mean to (as it seems unlikely to please the censors) the film gives tacit approval to vigilante violence in subtly suggesting that “official” justice is rendered impossible because of the complex networks of corruption that exist within the soceity. Meng Chao says the man who raped his sister was a judge which is why he had to kill him, while Xiaoyu seems to desire individual vengeance believing the police aren’t investigating properly but refusing to go to them with key evidence because she wants to kill her father’s killer herself. While carrying out their investigation, the pair end up adopting the wily daughter of another casualty of the villain’s greed and form an unlikely family unit marking them all out as good people who have been betrayed by the system which is itself corrupted by the nation’s headlong slide into irresponsible capitalism. 

Even so, revealing the villain so early weakens the suspense while their own motivations are left unexplored, assumed to be merely greed if perhaps also a wish to remain connected to influential people and be thought of as important at the cost of the lives of the general public (along with those of often exploited labourers) endangered by shoddy construction practices. It isn’t entirely clear how they intended to deal with the fallout of their machinations to cover up their past misdeeds, especially as the sub-standard work on the bridge has already been exposed though obviously could be blamed on others no longer around to defend themselves, but perhaps it all amounts to crazed self-preservation pitched against the righteousness of Xiaoyu and Meng Chao who are after all wronged parties in China’s deeply entrenched judicial inequality. Nevertheless, we get the inevitable title card (left untranslated in the overseas release) explaining that justice was served and a censor-pleasing ending that still in its way suggests the police are incapable of solving these crimes and that the petty corruptions of small-town life are otherwise impossible to prosecute. 

The Fallen Bridge streamed as part of the 18th Season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

My Elder Brother (私の兄さん, Yasujiro Shimazu, 1934)

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A wastrel son and runaway daughter get a few lessons in filiality in Yasujiro Shimazu’s genial ‘30s comedy, My Elder Brother (私の兄さん, Watashi no Niisan). Reflecting the changing the times, the film is in many ways about navigating the sometimes fraught relationships among a blended family though like many hahamono, it’s the stepson who is most devoted to his mother while the birth son is consumed by a sense of guilt and inadequacy in his accidentally awkward positioning within the family hierarchy.

The filial piety of eldest son Shige (Reikichi Kawamura) is established early on by the fact he’s not at work because his mother is ill and he’s off visiting her. He does in fact return late at night, though there’s a question mark over his qualities as a boss as the drivers at the taxi firm he runs remark that he’s been ignoring their attempts to negotiate with him for better conditions not least the provision of assistants which has been given additional weight by one driver’s experience with a disturbed fare who attempted to strange him with his belt.

The strange and violent opening sequence in which a cabbie is attacked by a crazed passenger is never referenced again and out of keeping with the otherwise lighthearted tone of the film though does add to a sense of danger later echoed in the appearance of two guys who first seem like yakuza but are actually just two grumpy old men trying to retrieve a young woman who’s run away in defiance of an arranged marriage. In any case, tearaway brother Fumio (Kazuo Hasegawa), who arrives drunk in the back of a cab, has indeed fallen into bad company with yakuza whom he describes as his friends though Shige warns him they’re probably just after his money.

Fumio has returned because he’s learned his mother is ill, though he’s reluctant to see her given his present condition. When he does actually meet her, she says that she hates him and calls him a good-for-nothing, worthless man. It seems her animosity is partly motivated by a sense of guilt and embarrassment that her biological son has brought shame to the family she married into and especially to Shige. For his part, Shige acknowledges that he also felt resentful when Fumio and his mother moved in but explains that he was still a child clinging to the memory of his late birth mother. Fumio explains to the young woman he picks up, Sumako (Kinuyo Tanaka), who is on the run from her uncle and the man her stepmother wants her to marry, that he left home because of his precarious status and sense of inadequacy but liked the sense of freedom his independence gave him even if he is ashamed of the kind of life he’s lived on the fringes of the underworld. 

Sumako is experiencing a similar dilemma as she feels herself unable to bond with her stepmother to the extent that she has not been able to articulate that she objects to the arranged marriage her relatives have set up for her. She laments that if it were her birthmother she should be able to tell her everything, but Fumio counters that Shige had been jealous of him because he could exchange harsh words with his mother because of their closeness in a way he never could because he is not her biological son. Reinforcing a sense of obligation between parents and children might have been an important message in the mid-1930s, but the film is perhaps unexpectedly progressive in its openness and desire to embrace these then considered less usual family arrangements born of second marriages in emphasising the brotherly bond between the two men and Sumako’s successful escape from an unwanted marriage simply by speaking her true feelings to her mother not to mention the suggestion of a cross class romance between rich girl Sumako and the middle-class Fumio.

Meanwhile, the film also has an international bent in the prominent signs for Chevrolet and Hollywood-esque aesthetics, drawing inspiration from American and European crime films for the violent opening sequence and underworld setting. Shimazu hints at the shadiness of Fumio’s backstreets life, but equally of Sumako’s uncle and his moustachioed friend lending an undertone of darkness to the mid-30s society but otherwise keeps things light in the innocent courtship between Fumio and Sumako who can mediate their attraction only by remarking on the beauty of a sunset. 

A Boy and a Girl (少男少女, Hsu Li-Da, 2023)

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A young man on the cusp of adolescence longs to escape his miserable circumstances but gradually finds himself succumbing to the corruption all around him in Hsu Li-Da’s bleak coming of age drama, A Boy and a Girl (少男少女, shàonánshàonǚ). Though the title may sound like a cheerful rom-com, Hsu’s film is closer to anti-romance as the ill-defined relationship between the two provokes unforeseen changes and eventually dangerous situations. 

In any case, all the Boy’s trouble’s start when his phone gets broken in the middle of a deal to sell in game points signalling an abrupt end to his escapist dreams. He’s desperate to get another one, but his mother can’t afford it and has problems of her own in that the hostess bar she runs is in financial trouble and she’s had to enter a sexual relationship with a local thug just to keep it running. The Boy catches them at it, and looks on voyeuristically laying bare his oedipal desires coupled with a moralistic objection to the act and resentment towards the gangster.

For these reasons he becomes determined to escape his moribund small town along with the hostess bar where his mother works by fighting back against adult duplicity. After meeting the Girl and gaining access to her phone, he discovers that she had been involved in a sexual relationship with their PE teacher which had resulted in a pregnancy. The pair of them attempt to blackmail the teacher with screen caps of his incriminating messages to her, but the plan backfires. The teacher doesn’t feel under threat and gets two of his underlings to beat the Boy up rather than pay. The Boy is morally outraged by the teacher’s behaviour and thinks someone ought to do something, but doesn’t know what to do so lands on blackmail as a form of punishment though as it turns out the Girl was less interested in vengeance or money than whether the teacher really loved her. Like the Boy, the Girl is mostly alone. She claims not to know who her mother is, while her father is suffering with an illness.

As expected they plot their escape together, but events soon overtake them. With the blackmail scheme ruined, the girl settles on sex work and the Boy becomes a kind of pimp if a conflicted one frustrated by the Girl’s whimsical businesses sense which sees her tell a potential client to forget about the money because he’s not quite as hideous as all the others. Meanwhile, she starts giving the boy a drug called Little Devil which causes those who take it to laugh manically and commit acts of extreme violence. Left without a moral arbiter the boy has nowhere to turn. Not only can he not talk to his mother’s boyfriend, but eventually encounters a corrupt cop whose immediate reaction is to tout for a bribe or, as he would have it, protection money. 

In this very messed up environment, all relationships have become transactional. Gradually the Boy begins to behave like those around him and takes on the codes of the masculinity with which he is presented, posturing and squaring up to his mother’s boyfriend in contest over ownership of her. His mother wants escape too, but is afraid and constrained by the persistent misogyny of the present society even if, ironically, her work her also leans into it in running a karaoke bar where the some of the hostesses are encouraged to undress. The more they try to escape, the tighter the noose seems to grow refusing to let any of them leave and denying them even the hope of better life.

Already cynical, the Girl is resigned to her fate and in fact no longer really resisting it save for interactions with the Boy. Told that her father is much sicker than they thought and needs an expensive operation, the Girl suggests that she doesn’t intend to pay while the Boy tries his best to get cash to pay off the ganger, free his mother, and keep the bar only to be confronted with his naivety. The picture Hsu paints of contemporary Taiwan is bleak and unforgiving, refusing either of the pair the prospect of a happier future and guaranteeing only misery for all in a land of cheats and gangsters in which a good heart is weakness few can afford.

A Boy and a Girl screened as part of the 18th Season of Asian Pop-Up Cinema.

Original trailer (English subtitles)

Connected (保持通話, Benny Chan, 2008)

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A kidnapped woman’s only hope is a distant stranger in Benny Chan’s intense thriller, Connected (保持通話). Inspired by 2004’s Cellular, Chan shifts the action to contemporary Hong Kong with all of its global anxieties but eventually insists that we are all in a sense connected and have a responsibility to each other in the face of corrupt authorities and an increasingly selfish society. In contrast to other techno thrillers, technology is not threat but cure enabling unlikely alliances and facilitating justice both legal and emotional as the heroes work together yet apart to unscramble the shady threat that follows them. 

Mainlander and top robotics engineer Grace Wong (Barbie Hsu) is having a fairly normal day dropping her daughter Tinker off at school before heading into work only to be blindsided by an oncoming truck and stolen away to a secret location. With no clue what’s going on she realises the landline in the shack where they’re keeping her is still connected but one of the goons smashes it before she can get through to anyone. Using her engineering skills she’s able to rewire the surviving bits but can only make random connections which is how she ends up getting through to conflicted debt collector Bob (Louis Koo) who has problems of his own as his son, raised by his sister after his wife’s death, is supposed to be emigrating to Australia this very day and will forever lose faith in his father for his constant disappointments if he doesn’t make it to the airport by 3pm. 

Bob’s buried goodness is immediately signalled by his discomfort with his job as he watches the more violent members of crew harass and intimidate a lone woman and her crying children in an ironic mirror of his son and Grace’s daughter both also in tears while pulled into the orbit of vicious outside forces. Though originally reluctant, assuming he’s on the receiving hand of a prank call, Bob soon comes to realise that Grace and also her daughter are in real danger and after an early attempt to enlist the police fails he is the only one who can save her. Nevertheless, he is torn between conflicting responsibilities, this one to a stranger and the other to his son who has entirely lost faith in him because of his broken promises and internalised shame over the nature of his job. He finds himself doing quite extraordinary things to keep both promises which further mark him out as a “good person”, such as firing a gun at the floor to get the attention of a bored shop clerk who’d been trolling him but then insisting on paying the full amount for his phone charger and not even stopping for the change. 

Even so, there’s further conflict on the horizon when it turns out the crooks, led by a spooky Mainlander, are carrying Interpol badges leaving a huge question mark about what’s really going on, who the good guys are in this situation and whose side everyone else is on. Unthinkable in the current cinematic climate, the spectre of police corruption raises its ugly head though despite having failed to respond when originally hailed wronged hero cop Fai (Nick Cheung) eventually jumps into action after noticing something suspicious enabling Bob to fulfil his heroic missions and followthrough on his promises. 

Filled dry black humour, Chan’s worldview is tinged with an irony that also makes its way into the extremely elaborate action sequences including a car chase that later plows through an entire truck of Pepsi Max, and a flirtatious boyfriend who swears to protect his lady love for all eternity only to run off at the first sign of danger. Yet there’s also an idealistic faith in human goodness in Bob and Fai’s refusal to back down in the face of injustice, each of them somewhat revitalised in their quests to rescue Grace whose engineering skills made the whole thing possible in the first place along with her determination of save herself and protect her family. It really is all connected, the intricate, slow burn mystery gradually revealing itself thanks to the growing connection between the heroes, each of them strangers but stepping up when needed unable to abandon someone in danger while refusing to allow corrupt authority to treat their homeland with such contempt.

Original trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles)