Love and Duty (Bu Wancang, 1931): Mini-Film Review

As cinema historians and I have described in detail elsewhere, Republic of China (Taiwan, R.O.C.) cinema traces it's pre-1945 heritage to the mainland Chinese film tradition. After all, when the Nationalists fled the mainland in 1949, their number included film directors and personnel who relocated to Taiwan. Director Bu Wancang's 卜萬蒼1931 Shanghai film, Love and Duty 戀愛與義務, produced by Lianhua Film Company, is part of this lineage.

Starring the brilliant Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉 (on whom I've written an encyclopedia entry) and Jin Yan 金焰, the 153 minute silent film portrays a love affair, between a married woman and her childhood sweetheart, and the suffering this relationship ultimately causes.

The portrayal of emotion is over the top, each scene incredibly slow paced. The camera lingers on close-ups of each actor's face until all of the expressions that signify a particular emotion are exhausted, in keeping with late 1920s and early 1930s norms. What is fascinating to observe is the way that this particular style of acting and character portrayal came to be representative of film-making more generally across China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong--even today, when the camera stays focused on an individual a little longer than necessary to convey a particular idea, we find the archaeology of these depictions from this earlier time.

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

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.

Connection by Fate (Wan Jen,1998): Mini-Film Review

Connection by Fate 超級公民 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 1998), the third film in Taiwan director Wan Jen's “super citizen” trilogy, reminds me of French films of the 1990s in that it--as the director has also concurred--is not driven by a cause-and-effect plot, but rather emotion. In it, a taxi driver named A-te encounters, and discovers a way to assist, the spirit of an indigenous man trapped between the world of the living and the departed in late-1990s Taipei.

Wan Jen's films are somehow perfect despite their imperfections: asynchronous sound, low budget effects, and non-professional acting. In the 1960s and 1970s cinema of Taiwan, poor production values are comical. Here, it is impossible to be distracted because the screenplay is superb. Wan Jen is a transcendent director, a master of depicting memory and a master of seamlessly juxtaposing time periods and locations, most often via the use of a soundscape that is both beautiful and haunting.

Corollary notes: I also found fragments of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Café Lumière (produced five years later) in Wan Jen's film: shots on the MRT and a scene in a small train station built during the Japanese colonial era come to mind. Additionally, a few rural tracking shots from HHH's Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996) overlap with Wan Jen's depictions in Connection by Fate.

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

Super Citizen Ko (Wan Jen,1995): Mini-Film Review

Super Citizen Ko 超級大國民 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 1995), which won multiple Golden Horse awards in 1995, is must-see for anyone interested in depictions of political oppression generally, and Taiwan history in the late 20th century specifically. Presented in a series of flashbacks linked by a simple yet moving melancholic score, the film uncovers the life of an aging man who lost nearly everything during Taiwan's White Terror.

Wan Jen's film follows an elderly protagonist named Ko as he recollects being imprisoned for participating in a left-wing reading group during Chiang Kai-Shek's leadership, while in the present it captures Taiwan's mid-1990s, and at times rocky, transformation into a truly democratic state. Along the way the camera does not waiver from depicting Taiwan's most precarious situations both historically and concurrently. It is as sophisticated and complex as any film ever made.

I always wonder, when considering Taiwan's films, the extent to which global audiences might appreciate them because political oppression is experienced and understood universally, while at the same time, Taiwan's situation is singular, considering it's colonial past, the repression of the KMT/GMD/Nationalist government post-1949, and the pluralistic society in Taiwan which has emerged post-1987. Regardless, my hope is that Taiwan films such as this one will enjoy continuous, widespread acclaim.

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

The Farewell Coast (Wan Jen, 1987): Mini-Film Review

The Farewell Coast 惜別海岸 (Wan Jen 萬仁, 1987) portrays two young people, a waiter at a restaurant and a prostitute, caught between Taiwan's pre-1987 culture under martial law and the modern pluralistic democracy which is Taiwan today. The first act of the film could appear to be a melodramatic love story in the vein of KMT/GMD/Nationalist government-produced films of the 1960s and 70s, but by the second act Wan Jen's film spirals out of control, in the vein of Bonnie and Clyde, as the director explores ideas previous filmmakers in Taiwan could have only dreamed of representing. Along the way, its characters reflect on what it means to be Taiwanese with only the slightest of connections to the mainland.

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

Film Reviews: Taiwan Cinema Toolkit 臺灣電影工具箱

Created by the Taiwan Ministry of Culture and selected by the Taiwan Film Institute, the Taiwan Cinema Toolkit 臺灣電影工具箱 is a collection of films available for non-profit public screenings. Each film offers a unique insight into Taiwan's rich cinema history.

Links to my reviews of films from two of these collections are below--I'll keep adding films to this page until all of the films are reviewed. -- jw

2016 Taiwan Cinema Toolkit  (32 films)

1. The Farewell Coast 惜別海岸 (Wan Jen 萬仁, 1987)

2. Super Citizen Ko 超級大國民 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 1995)

3. Connection by Fate 超級公民 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 1998)
4. It Takes Two to Tango 跨海跳探戈 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 2013)
5. Love and Duty 戀愛與義務 (Bu Wancang 卜萬蒼, 1931)
6. Storm Over the Yangtse River 揚子江風雲 (Li Han-Hsiang 李翰祥, 1969)
7. Four Moods 喜怒哀樂 (Bai, Hu, Li, Li, 1970)
8. The Young Ones (Li, 1973)
9. Love in Chilly Spring (Chen, 1979)
10. Deng Nan-guang's 8mm Movies (Deng,1935-1941)
11. Civil Disobedience (Chen, 2013)
12. Face to Face (Chung, 2013)
13. Attabu 阿罩霧風雲 (Hsu, 2013)
14. Sock’ n Roll 台灣黑狗兄 (Ho, 2014)
15. Money and Honey 麵包情人 (Lee, 2012)

Showcase, 2016 (22 films)