The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful

I'm afraid this movie is too China, too post-Japan Tawanese, too true for those distant hidden society not replaced by modern society (which frankly is the western way). It looks absurd, but too true.... Can't say we are lucky or unlucky to live by the international standard now. When watching it, i feel both familiar and strange, well we are going to lose a lot of Chinese style scheme (and bond), good? bad? Can't say. So, the typical 'I'm doing this for your sake' appeared again! how many Chinese family is using this to kill their children?

Barely 8 stars. At the beginning of the opera, it's better not to let people in the clouds. The whole story and performance are online, and the script is solid. The granddaughter's ugly face is paralyzed. The only thing she can see is the last look at her grandmother. It's her mother who should match the girl. Comparing her granddaughter's eyes and expressions with her mother's, it's different from heaven and earth.

This is perhaps the worst film that had ridiculously won several awards of the Taiwanese Golden Horse Film Festival 2017. The whole screenplay got serious time-era periodical mistakes, a messy wrong intertwines of political, regional, social background. This film is so pretentiously scripted, directed and acted by all the members involved in this production.

We have seen in this film a strong influence of the Japanese culture that has been obsessed by the Taiwanese people. The settings were so messy, sometimes Japanese, sometimes ancient Chinese, sometimes island Taiwanese. The costumes in this film showed specially designed modern current dresses, but the staging furnitures were ancient of 1950~1960, even with the old TV. The ridiculous dialog not just pretentious but totally out of sync with layouts of the film's time frame, so messy and so moronically drafted. The time frame of this film is the most serious mess-up, so confusing, with all the old furnitures around, modern costumes, buffet, wi-fi and cellphone communication.....Nothing is right, just a randomly patched up lousy production work. The actings of all the people performed in this film were just horrible to watch, their dialog and performance were all ruined by the pretentious, clueless dialog, so every one in this film inevitably acted so pretentiously and so awkwardly.

This major winner of the 2017 Taiwan Film Festival only exposed how poor the taste of those film judges were and how pretentious they were. "The Grand Buddha+" was mediocre but not too ridiculous to watch, but this film, my, my, my, is just so over-the-top painfully to watch. It's a messy, absurd farce.

Awarding this film as the big winner 2017 only proved how shallow and unreliable of this so-called Taiwanese Film Festival, a certified laughable joke!

The story is captivating, multi-layered characters with many intentions and dark. It has everything one would want in a mystery/drama/slow burn....but the attempts at being artsy made it super hard to follow. The all-knowing character that sings on side scenes at major plot points, odd moments of voice overs and flashbacks mixed with hallucinations makes it quite hard to fully grasp what is happening. I felt the story is strong on it's own as the actors did a fantastic job, the other elements-although innovative-distracted from the major plot.

Overall, it was engaging but could have been so much better.

Ps. I felt the actress Wen Chen Ling (who plays Lin pian pain) was underrated in her portrayal. Watch her in the 9th precinct and Teenage Psychic...Wen Chen Ling is like a Chamaeleon, she does each role so well.

It is not your usual movie, I had to watch twice to understand the plot. Maybe, I'm slow, but there were so many going on. But once you get it, you will find that there is deeper meaning in each scene. It needs a meticulous heart to enjoy.