by Cathy Lai
Are you tired of Hollywood movies? There are other choices, especially movie festivals that show non-commercial movies. While Hollywood movies feature famous stars and special effects, these films are more humble and yet more honest and true to the idea of the cinema. These filmmakers are artists rather than businessmen. They convey messages and feelings and concerns about society. Take one recent Taiwanese movie: Splendid Float (豔光四射歌舞團). A-wei, one of the performers of the splendid float, is a Taoist priest in the daytime, and transforms into a dazzling transvestite named Rose at night. While the Splendid Float was touring around giving performances at weddings, funerals, and all kinds of feasts, A-wei meets A-young and falls in love. But A-young is drowned. In the film’s final scenes A-wei and A-young dance one final dance, like a dream, indistinct, hazy, and sorrowful. According to one of the actors in the film, the last few scenes are both illusory and real at the same time, which means that when people cross the boundary between life and death, or between male and female they can be rid of the constraints of social conventions. This is the true heaven, in which there are no more taboos and all conflicting elements eventually fuse together. This is what the director and screenwriter, Zero, wants to convey. And this the real meaning of the slogan, “Let the Splendid Float guide you to eternal heaven,” which in the film becomes a profound pun. I learned that there were also some strange occurrences when they shot the final scenes on location. First they had a traffic accident when they started rehearsing, and then when they went to the riverbank park under the Hua-jiang Bridge, the director received a text message from one of the actors who then claimed that he never sent it. The cast became frightened and hurried to burn incense and paper money as an offering to the spirits of the dead and begged for their tolerance when shooting the scene. They shot without incident ever since. Splendid Float is the first film to feature drag queens in Taiwan. It makes us think again about gender issues. But it also records Taiwanese customs faithfully, and is woven with colorful illusions and visions. The music has also been highly praised for its reflection of Taiwanese motifs. Splendid Float is a marvelous film. Yet the movie did not get enough financial support, so that the director is still in debt more than NT 2,000,000. Zero had been planning and working on the film for many years, and it was always her dream to make this movie. She has spent more than seven years working on documentaries to record images of homosexual people in Taiwan. Her movies express her concerns about life, and often make audience ponder over life’s many paradoxes. Taiwanese films are valuable since they are culture conscious. They present local customs, our attitude toward life, our way of thinking and living, and what dilemmas we face. In Splendid Float I see a typical Taiwanese film, having both an easygoing tone and a deeper meaning at the same time. According to one of the actors, there are no “typical” Taiwanese movies, because there are many styles. Whatever the case, we must be aware of the fact that we have our own distinctive culture and therefore should cherish our own rather than envy others’. There are artists making efforts to document our culture and to express their concerns over controversial issues in Taiwanese society. Seldom do these moviemakers get enough financial support, and their audiences are small. But we should do our best to support them. These are great films and we can feel touched so much that we love our culture even more. a
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May 2024
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