Saturday, June 23, 2018

It Takes Two to Tango (Wan Jen, 2013): Mini-Film Review

Wan Jen's 2013 film It Takes Two to Tango 跨海跳探戈 uses humor to illustrate both cultural differences and similarities between mainland Chinese and Taiwanese as it tells the story of a young woman from Taiwan (王心如) who draws ire from her family upon getting engaged to her fiancé from China. One of the standout performances is by the protagonist's father, played by Bor Jeng Chen 陳博正, who had the starring role in Hou Hsaio-Hsien's vignette The Sandwich Man 兒子的大玩偶 in 1983.

It Takes Two to Tango attempts to be a fun movie and has a few gags, and it demonstrates the extent to which free speech is the norm in Taiwan as the film does not hesitate to touch a number of hot-button issues, but over all it is less successful in what it sets out to achieve than the similarly themed The Wonderful Wedding 大囍臨門 (Huang Chao-liang 黃朝亮, 2015), which I would recommend of the two.


For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

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