Review - Touch of the Light

October 10, 2013

Touch of the Light – Taiwan, 2012

A bank in Taiwan has an advertising campaign that features someone in need being ignored over and over. In one of their commercials, a man stands in the rain sneezing, and person after person declines to offer him a spot under their umbrella. In another, an elderly man is riding his bike when his hat blows off his head, and a string of passersby elect not to pick it up for him. All versions of this commercial end happily though, for at last a lone decent character offers assistance. The point of the ads seems to be that the world can be a cruel place, but if you are someone who bucks the trend and shows compassion to his or her fellow man, good things will happen. It’s a nice message, but I wonder how many people pick up on the ads’ not-so-subtle critique of society as a whole. It seems to be saying that decent people are, at the very least, in the minority, and a helping hand may not be as forthcoming as it should be.

I was reminded of this by the first part of Chang Jung-Chi’s film, Touch of the Light, which is a sweet, yet predictable film about likeable characters living in an often uncaring world. The film is about a blind musician named Huang Yu-Siang (playing himself in the film) and a young woman named Xiao Jie (Sandrine Penna), who yearns to be a dancer. The musician is from the countryside, and as the film opens, he is on his way to Taipei to study music at a university. He is hardly welcomed with open arms. Instead of being offered assistance, he is “thanked” for wasting one of his classmate’s time, and it is clear that his classmates as a whole consider him to be little more than a burden.

Jie is in an equally challenging situation. Her mother is unemployed and spends all of her time ordering things she sees advertised on a home shopping channel, her father works nights and just may have a drinking problem, and her boyfriend clearly has eyes for someone else. To top it all off, she has had to give up the thing she loves most in the world – dancing. In her mother’s eyes, it just isn’t stable enough. Given that these two characters are a musician and a dancer, it is only a matter of time before they meet and one is dancing to the other’s accompaniment.

A film like this wouldn’t be complete without a group of oddballs, for in movies, it is almost always the oddball that can accept and befriend someone who is “different.” The chief oddball in this film is Chu Tze-Ching, a kindhearted and fun-loving college student whose goal is to form a group that can rival all of the other music clubs on campus. Oddly enough, what they come up with reminded me of what was produced when Lisa became the music teacher for a day on Saved by the Bell.

Touch of the Light has its share of powerful, irresistible moments, despite its rather predictable story arc. I enjoyed seeing how Siang learns to get around, while also questioning the necessity for so many of these scenes. I also found a conversation about what Siang is looking for in a young lady interesting. His answer? A nice voice. And I was rather moved by the joy and freedom that can be seen on Jie’s face as she rediscovers her love for dancing. In addition, the conversations between Siang and Jie feel surprisingly authentic given the leap of faith that is required to think they would keep bumping into each other, and a later trip that they take together is particularly insightful, even if I wasn’t quite sure enough had happened to make such a trip entirely realistic. Finally, that the two lead characters end up where they do is not a surprise for a film of this nature, yet it is still rather moving to see two characters standing up and demanding to be noticed.

One of the most interesting aspects of Touch of the Light is the way it enables viewers to see a bit of the world as Siang sees it. Throughout the film, we see Siang developing a way of picturing the world in his head. He accomplishes this partly by using both his hearing and his memory to form a picture of his surroundings. He also uses something I’ll call substitution. In one scene that demonstrates this, Siang asks what dancing looks like, and Chu Tzu-Ching describes it as being similar to the spinning blades of a fan. This is clearly an image that Siang is familiar with, and he is able to then juxtapose the image of a person dancing over the image of a spinning fan.

The cast of Touch of the Light is particularly strong. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Lee Lieh’s portrayal of Siang’s mother. She makes it possible for the audience to see just how hard it is for a parent to step back and let a child with visual or physical impairments take care of himself. Also, I appreciated the authenticity that Hsieh Kan-chun brought to the role of Ching. He turned what could have been a stereotypical character into one with heart and feelings. However, the film clearly belongs to Sandrine Penna. She gives a truly amazing performance that will likely remind viewers a bit of Natalie Portman’s award-winning turn in Black Swan. The difference is that while Portman’s Nina Sayers was slowly driving herself mad while dancing, Penna’s character is rediscovering what it means to be alive. Showing this requires Penna to act with her entire body, for the audience must be able to see just how much dancing affects Jie and just how different she is after she starts dancing again. To say Penna nails this is an understatement, and her performance is well worthy of the recognition it received at the 2013 Golden Horse Awards, Taiwan’s equivalent of the Academy Awards. All in all, Touch of the Light is a rather conventional film, yet it is also quite moving. It is certainly worth checking out if you have the chance. (on DVD and Blu-ray in Taiwan)

3 stars

*Touch of the Light is in Min Nan and Mandarin with English subtitles.

Review – Miao Miao

February 5, 2010

Miao Miao – Taiwan, 2008

Cheng Hsiao–tse’s well-acted directorial debut Miao Miao relies heavily upon what is rapidly becoming one of the most overused narrative techniques of our time – the fractured narrative. Used well, as it was in 21 Grams and Memento, the technique can add enormous emotional power to a film. Used poorly, it comes across as a technique solely intended to create the illusion of suspense or importance when none in fact existed in the first place. Unfortunately, Miao Miao is an example of a film that employs this technique yet simply has nothing monumental or earth-shattering to lead up to. That said, it’s hard to see any other way the film could have been structured.

Imagine for a moment that we saw the film in true narrative form. We would first see a young music producer named Chen Fei (Fan Wing) meet a young singer named Bei. The two are instantly drawn to each other, and they share a night of passion. We would then see Chen Fei’s hesitance to fully acknowledge the relationship and Bei’s slight emotional unraveling. Soon, we would watch Chen Fei and the rest of Indigo, the band Bei was a member of, have to come to terms with Bei’s sudden death. We would see Chen Fei delete the songs Bei had recorded from his computer and then withdraw from the world, only to resurface later as the owner of a second-hand music store somewhere in Taipei County.

We would then be introduced to Miao Miao (Ke Jai-yan), a young Taiwanese girl who has spent most of her life in Japan. We would see her struggle to cope at first, for she is both without friends and the unfortunate recipient of immature young men’s aggressive flirtations. We would see her meet Xiao Ai (the always reliable Chang Yung-yung) at an MRT station and quickly become good friends with her. Soon Miao Miao would go in search of the bakery where her grandmother says she met the greatest love of her life, only to find Chen Fei’s stop where the bakery had once stood. We would see the way Miao Miao seems to instantly take a liking to Chen Fei, despite the fact that Chen Fei hardly speaks, even when spoken to.

Viewed in this order, what follows would have absolutely no suspense whatsoever, as we would already know that Chen Fei is both grieving and not interested in women. We would likely watch Miao Miao’s attempts to get his attention with a tinge of sympathy, for we would know that no matter what she did, she could not win his heart. In other words, the film would be a sort of romantic tragedy about unrequited love, which is clearly not the effect that screenwriters Cheng and Tsai Yi-fen had in mind. Judging from how events in Miao Miao are actually presented, it seems they intended for viewers to think that true love was indeed a possibility for Chen Fei and Miao Miao. In short, in chronological order, the film would have an entirely different feel to it. But would it be a better film? I doubt it. The events would simply be coherent a little bit earlier.

This is of course not to suggest that Miao Miao is a good film, over even one that comes close to being good. For one, Miao Miao supposedly takes place over a year, a fact that surprised me when it was revealed. The film also has a running time of just eighty-four minutes, which is simply not enough time to adequately make the three stories at the heart of Miao Miao compelling. In addition, the film focuses on completely insignificant subplots, such as Miao Miao and Xiao Ai’s attempt to win a cooking contest, yet does not focus nearly enough on storylines that had enormous potential, such as Xiao Ai’s strained relationship with her father. On the plus side, I was deeply moved by Chen Fei’s desperate search for Indigo’s demo CD, for he realizes that without it, his memories of Bei will one day have completely faded away.

There is one additional romantic storyline that should be mentioned, and that is Xiao Ai’s growing feelings for Miao Miao. It’s clear to viewers, as well as to Miao Miao herself, just what Xiao Ai’s feelings are, yet for this storyline to have possibilities, Miao Miao must be open to it, which she is not. And therefore, we have a storyline – two in fact – that have no possibility of ending in the way viewers are so accustomed to seeing a movie like Miao Miao end. I’m not suggesting that there must be a Disney-like ending at the end of every film, but without some sort of payoff at the end of this patricular film, I was left wondering what the point was. I suppose it could be Miao Miao’s realization that not everything ends like the fairy tales children read when they’re young, but a message like that will not come as much of a surprise to viewers.

I suppose it’s a bad sign when you’re watching a movie and you suddenly think to yourself, “Hey, I’ve been in that second-hand shop!” Or when you’re eyes begin to roll at a scene involving a young girl being afraid of chicken legs. Or when you think to yourself that what you just heard two teenage girls talk about was a bit more information than you needed. Or when you find yourself screaming at the screen, “People don’t run after airplanes!” Maybe I’m wrong about the film being too short. Maybe it should have found a way to do more with what little time it had, for as it is, it’s hardly worth devoting even eighty-four minutes to it. (on DVD in Region 3)

2 and a half stars

*Miao Miao is in Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Japanese with English subtitles.

Review – Do Over

January 4, 2010

Do Over – Taiwan, 2006

I have no experience with drug-induced hallucinations – or as some may prefer “visions.” That said, I’m pretty sure that two people who are experiencing the side effects of recently-popped pills cannot have the same hallucination simultaneously. So when two characters in Cheng Yu-chieh’s debut film Do Over both believe they are standing on the moon, I found myself rolling my eyes instead of trying to see the metaphor in the scene. I continue to believe that scenes such as this one are only plausible if they can be found throughout a film, and unfortunately they only occur towards the end of Do Over. The result of this is the creation of an unnecessarily complex ending, one that seemingly exists in a reality completely contrary to the one that the first three-fourths of the film established.

Do Over takes places over two days, the end of one year and the beginning of another. The film begins on the second day with the image of a young man name Pang (Wang Ching-kuan) standing in the middle of a one-way rural road blocking traffic. The infuriated inhabitants of the three cars now lined up in front of Pang are not placated by his explanation of there being a movie shooting a short scene just up the road. Soon, five men dressed in black step out of the cars, and in a moment, one of them is pointing a gun at Pang while the others hurl insults and obscenities his way. It’s not the only abuse we see him have to put up with. The previous evening, the director’s assistant had been less than polite to him on more than one occasion. In fact, I’m not even sure that Pang is in fact his real name. It’s more likely that “Little Pang” is the “endearing” term his associates have chosen to call him due to his apparent weight problem. I imagine he would entertain the notion of quitting if the girl he likes weren’t starring in the film.

Later, we’re introduced to Ding-An (Huang Chien-wei), an illegal immigrant who runs drugs for a local crime boss. His only hopes of a normal life rest in being approved for a Taiwanese identification card, for without one, he has no identity and no personal freedom. He is also in love with a young toll collector despite the fact that he does not even know her name and has likely never spoken to her. Early on in the film, Ding-An learns from a small-time drug user/seller that his ID card has in fact already been issued, indicating that it is being intentionally withheld from him by people that he had assumed he could trust. Without it, he cannot visit his sick father in his home country. There are other characters as well - a director named Lixiang (Mo Tzu-yi). who seems to be having an emotional breakdown; a young man (Ko Yue-lin) who pops pills and drives a sports car that he excitedly keeps referring to as KITT; Xiaohui (well played by Chang Yung-yung aka Sandrine Pinna), the young man’s girlfriend; and her deaf friend from Japan who is referred to as Butterfly (Ko Chia-yen) because of the butterfly tattoo that adorns the back of her neck.

Despite some interesting plotlines, Do Over can best be described as a mixed bag. While I enjoyed the storyline involving Ding-An, the conclusion to that storyline stretches the imagination a bit too much with its attempt to be romantic. In addition, Lixiang is an interesting character, yet his scenes with Butterfly seem more forced than natural. It’s one thing for a character to find his soul mate in a club - and the scene in which they do meet is handled with great skill - but soon the two of them are talking to each other about the future as if it were a physical place in front of them and thinking they are stepping into a black abyss that they describe as the “dark side of the moon,” all the while under the influence of pills. If the moment is intended to show their immediate intimacy, it was lost on me. If it’s a dream sequence, exactly whose dream is it? It can’t be both of theirs.

I did enjoy the part of the film that dealt with Pang and Fifi (An-an Hsu), the girl he loves. In their few moments together, they establish a rapport that is genuine and heartfelt. There is a moment in the film when Fifi is informed that the director is adding a romantic scene to the script. Romantic scenes are not new to films, yet the look that Fifi gives Pang is truly extraordinary. She doesn’t appear to be apologizing for the scene, but rather for him having to be there while it is being shot. The glance they exchange makes everything that happens later between these two completely believable. As for the young drug dealer and his girlfriend, they fill the screen with a great deal of vitality. This is true of their scenes in the club as well as those scenes in which they are lost and confused. Of all the relationships in the film, theirs seems the most real. And yet the parts of Do Over that I liked just weren’t enough for me to like the whole film.

Do Over will likely make complete sense to someone willing to accept its final act, as well as its many unexplained events. Like Charlie Kaufman’s excellent film Adaptation, the events that occur in Do Over seem to be under the control of someone other than the characters themselves, as if the characters are being pushed – perhaps against their will – into clichéd, happily-ever-after endings. However, for such jovial endings to feel right in Do Over, they still have to make sense within each of the contexts established on the first day, and I’m not sure they do. Characters make illogical choices, completely new characters are introduced in extraordinary circumstances, and events that made sense may no longer even occur. Some may see this as a sign of genius; I was rather put off by it.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my growing esteem for Huang Chien-wei. This is an actor completely comfortable conveying a wide range of emotions. In Do Over, he is called upon to be tough and emotional, and he succeeds in a way that many other stars only dream they could. Watch the way he talks about how much his ID means to him, and then watch the way he stands in front of one of the gang bosses and demands the ID. Huang is extremely impressive in both moments. Then compare his performance in Do Over to the one he gave just three years later in Yang Yang. You’d swear it was a completely different actor. I hope he gets a chance to topline a film soon – hopefully one that ends a bit better than Do Over. (on DVD in Region 3)

2 and a half stars

*Do Over is in Mandarin with English subtitles.

Review – Yang Yang

December 23, 2009

Yang Yang – Taiwan, 2009

In the opening scene of Cheng Yu-Chieh’s poignant and well-acted film Yang Yang, a guest at a wedding innocently remarks that Zhang Xinyang (Sandrine Pinna), also known as Yang Yang, looks like a foreigner. There does not appear to be any malicious intent behind the remark, and Yang Yang does not appear insulted or shocked by it, perhaps indicating that this is not the first time that someone has said this to her. She simply smiles and explains that she is half French. If there’s anger behind her wide joyful smile, it isn’t obvious. However, later in the film, we see that Yang Yang is in the habit of hiding undesirable feelings and experiences behind smiles and half-hearted laughter. It must sting to be seen as an outsider in the only country she has ever called home.

The truth is that Yang Yang has never seen her father and does not speak French at all. Moreover, she was born in Taiwan, considers herself Taiwanese, and speaks fluent Mandarin. However, it is her Eurasian features that some people fixate on and draw conclusions from. Yang Yang’s step-sister, Xiao-Ru (Her Sy-huoy), uses them against her when she wants to hurt her; at other times, men who may otherwise have not paid much attention to her at all throw a bit too much of it in her direction, and not all of this attention is the kind she should be flattered by. For example, a stranger videotapes her at track practice, a director makes the erroneous assumption that she is European and can therefore speak perfect French, and a producer has more on his mind than just whether she’s right for a role in a film.

In the film, Yang Yang’s life is turned upside down by a picture hanging on a wall in a hallway of a local hospital. The picture is of her competing in a race, and the name of the photographer that took the picture is European. What does it mean? Could it be that the photographer is her long-lost father? Yang Yang doesn’t particularly care to find out, yet the picture causes her to experience a flood of strong emotions, and when Shawn (Bryant Chang), the young man who accompanied her to the hospital, tries to comfort her, they end up kissing. Normally this would not be a problem, except for the fact that Shawn is Xiao-Ru’s boyfriend. Shawn tells Yang Yang that he loves her and offers to break up with Xiao-Ru; to her credit, Yang Yang talks him out of it. Except that’s not the end of it. How can it be, for feelings as intense as theirs are can rarely just be swept under the rug and ignored? Soon it is Yang Yang’s turn to propose something not exactly proper – three hours with no inhibitions, three hours during which it will be as if they are different people. Simply put, whatever they do never happened. It’s easier said than done.

As Yang Yang deals with the repercussions of her decision, the film turns slowly from teen drama to a look at mistaken impressions. We learn that the man who videotaped her (Huang Chien-wei) at track practice is a decent and honorable man, that Shawn is not as stable as he first appears, and that to Xiao-Ru, keeping Shawn is a kind of victory in itself, even though maintaining that victory seems to be causing her nothing but stress and heartache. Betrayals occur, and dreams are shattered, only to be attempted again later on to no avail. And as art begins to imitate life, Yang Yang must face her own feelings about the father she’ll likely never know. “I wouldn’t go looking for him,” she later tells her director. The remark is both sad and courageous simultaneously.

In an odd coincidence, this week CNN reported on an American Idol-like television show in China. One of the contestants was a young woman of Chinese and African parents. The young woman made it far in the competition, but tragically found herself the subject of some of the vile online comments one could imagine. One comment even suggested that she should never have been born. Such comments are unfortunately all too common on the internet these days due to the sense of empowerment that perfect anonymity affords people. In Cheng’s film, Yang Yang is spared such harsh comments, but we get the feeling that her isolation is only going to grow with age, for even in the 21st century, we live in a world in which too many people still sees things as black and white or use versus them. Perhaps that realization is behind her remarkable smile at the end of the film. (on DVD in Region 3)

3 and a half stars

*Yang Yang is in Mandarin with English subtitles.