Taipei Story
| Taipei Story | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical poster | |
| Literally | green plums and a bamboo horse[1] |
| Directed by | Edward Yang |
| Written by | Chu T’ien-wen Hou Hsiao-hsien Edward Yang |
| Produced by | Huang Yung Lin Jung-feng Liu Sheng-chung |
| Starring | Hou Hsiao-hsien Tsai Chin |
| Cinematography | Yang Wei-han |
| Edited by | Wang Chi-yang Sung Fan-chen |
| Music by | Edward Yang |
Release date |
|
Running time | 110 minutes |
| Country | Taiwan |
| Languages | Mandarin Hokkien |
Taipei Story is a 1985 Taiwanese film directed, scored, and co-written by filmmaker Edward Yang — his second full-length feature film and third overall. The film stars Yang's fellow filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien, and singer Tsai Chin, whom Yang subsequently married. It is one of the earliest films of the New Taiwanese Cinema.
In the United States, Janus Films gave a limited release of the film's 4K restoration, done by the World Cinema Project, on March 17, 2017.[2][3]
Title
The original title, 青梅竹馬 "green plums and a bamboo horse", refers to Chinese plums and the childhood practice of riding a bamboo stick as a pretend horse. This idiom alludes to an 8th-century poem by Li Bai, and in China it refers to a childhood sweetheart. The English title alludes to the film Tokyo Story (1953).
Plot
A young woman (Tsai Chin) urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei, and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung (Hou Hsiao-hsien) is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.
Characters
- Tsai Chin - Chin, an office worker
- Hou Hsiao-hsien - Lung, a former baseball player
- Wu Nien-jen - Ch'en, a taxi driver and former baseball player
- Lin Hsiu-ling - Ling
- Ke Su-yun - Gwan
- Ko I-chen - Mr. Ke, an architect
- Mei Fang - Chin's mother
- Wu Ping-nan - Chin's father
- Yang Li-yin - Ch'en's wife
- Chen Shu-fang - Mrs. Mei
- Lai Te-nan - a coach
Themes
According to the Doc Film Society, the film "displays Yang's uncompromising critique of the middle-class with its dissection of its heroine's emotional fragility, vainly disguised behind the sunglasses she sports day and night. As she flees the past, her boyfriend idealistically clings to it, a Confucian rigidity toward which Yang bears still less patience."[4]
References
- ^ https://plus.google.com/+jenniferZhuECL/posts/ZbsbtUgzNh2
- ^ Anderson, Melissa (14 March 2017). "Past and Future Tug at an Unstable Present in a Restored Masterwork by Edward Yang". The Village Voice. Village Voice, LLC. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
- ^ "World Cinema Project". The Film Foundation. The Film Foundation. p. 2. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
Restored by The Film Foundation's World Cinema Project at Cineteca di Bologna/L'immagine Ritrovata laboratory...
- ^ Choi, Edo S.; Iovene, Paola, "A Time for Freedom: Taiwanese filmmakers in transition", doc films Spring 2009 Volume 3 Issue 3, Doc film society, University of Chicago, archived from the original on 9 June 2009, retrieved April 14, 2009
External links
- Taipei Story at IMDb
- Taipei Story (2017 re-release) at Box Office Mojo
- Taipei Story at Rotten Tomatoes
- Taipei Story: Modern Planning an essay by Andrew Chan at the Criterion Collection
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