Taiwanese dramas are usually a pretty safe bet and while most of them are not all that original or creative, in the end they definitely know how to deliver. Blowfish is one of the best examples I've seen so far, only sparingly experimenting with more frivolous elements, yet fleshing out on of the dearest romances I've seen on film so far. Chi Y. Lee just bumped up a few notches on my list of notable discoveries. Between this film and Lee's short film Smoke (included in the Taipei 24h anthology) it's clear that Lee both understands and embraces the visual aspect of the medium. While there are some sparse dialogues in Blowfish, they are few and far between and they consist mostly of small-talk. The...
- 12/6/2011
- Screen Anarchy
'Beautiful Strange' might be more apt. Little-known outside his home territory, director Chi Y. Lee's third film about the tangled relationships between three Taiwanese schoolgirls is the epitome of many an arthouse cliché (not to mention yet another entry in the country's very own sub-genre), and it never really does anything with the premise that comes off as truly startling or unexpected. But it is fantastically shot and scored, not to mention surprisingly heartfelt, even with its loose, hallucinatory structure and pacing.
There's Angel, Xiao-Bu and Ah Mi; one the extrovert, acting out in denial of her home life, the tiny, rundown flat she shares with her morbidly obese father; another the sensitive, concerned about her friends, wondering where their relationship is headed and the third the shy girl, tortured by her inability to reach out over what each of them is going through.
The narrative is a tenuous...
There's Angel, Xiao-Bu and Ah Mi; one the extrovert, acting out in denial of her home life, the tiny, rundown flat she shares with her morbidly obese father; another the sensitive, concerned about her friends, wondering where their relationship is headed and the third the shy girl, tortured by her inability to reach out over what each of them is going through.
The narrative is a tenuous...
- 12/13/2009
- Screen Anarchy
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