Red Rose White Rose [紅玫瑰白玫瑰] (1994)

Despite the quality of her stories (and the fact that she was herself a film writer), attempts to film Eileen Chang's books have met with mixed success. For every (excellent) L:ust, Caution there is an (awful) Love after Love. Stanley's Kwan's Red Rose White Rose (though not without its own problems) is probably one of…

Lost in the Shadows [看不见影子的少年] (2024)

Lost in the Shadows is the latest drama in the iQIYI Light On series. The storyline seems to be full of potential. In 1984, the young son of policeman Wang Shitu is abducted. Despite his continued efforts, the child has never been found. Almost a decade later, in 1993, three teenagers disappear in a small…

A Borrowed Life [多桑] (1994)

Although Wu Nien-jen had a long history as a screenwriter, dating back to the late 1970s and working with directors including Hou and Yang, this was his first film as a director. It is a semi-autobiographical account of life in Taiwan from the 1950s to the 1990s. focusing on the life of Wen-Jian, who we…

Hill of No Return [無言的山丘] (1992)

This movie is the longest, best and most serious in tone of Wang Toon's Taiwan Trilogy. Despite the almost three hour length, with Wu Nien-Jen as screenwriter, the film forms a much more coherent project than Banana Paradise and shows how much better that film could have been with a tighter script. This time we…

Wang Toon’s Taiwan Trilogy

A filmmaker, author or a painter that doesn't get close to one's homeland has no life. I'm Taiwanese and I have to film my own things. Taiwan has its own history of tragedies, and these subjects are alive and kicking, so I made the Trilogy. Wang Toon The most striking thing about New Taiwan Cinema,…

Run Away [策馬入林] (1984)

After his initial mainstream films (see last post), director Wang Toon made A Flower in a Rainy Night (11983) which I have not seen but which is seen as one of the most commercially successful films of Taiwan New Cinema. His next film was this - very different - movie. Run Away (literally Riding a…

Love me Love me not [错体情 窗口的月亮不准看] (1981)

Wang Toon (also Tung or Tong) was born in Anhui in 1942 moving with his parents to Taiwan in 1949. He worked in the Taiwanese film industry from the 1960s, mainly as art director but it was not till 1981 that he released his first film as director:  If I Were for Real. That film…

Spring and Autumn Teahouse [春秋茶室] (1988)

After Osmanthus Alley, Chen Kun-Hou directed this rather different film (aka My Mother's Tea House). It is - yet again - a coming-of-age film, the favourite topic of Taiwan New Cinema. The film is narrated by Fu-lin whose mother [Sylvia Chang] runs a teahouse which is, in fact, a brothel. She is in a relationship…

Osmanthus Alley [桂花巷] (1987)

After Growing Up, Chen Kun-hou directed a number of other movies in the 1980s including this one. Set in the early 1900s in a coastal area, the film opens in driving rain as a mother's body is lowered into the earth. Her children, daughter Tihung and younger son Tijiang watch on. Ten years later, Tihung…