 |
A junkyard cafe. That's Taipei Exchanges for ya.
|
At a glance:
Here's one of those dreamy Taiwanese movies I saw in Singapore a couple of years ago. Reportedly backed by the Taipei's tourism authorities, TV ad director
Hsiao Ya Chuan's
Taipei Exchanges a.k.a. 第36個故事 is a PG-rated fairy-tale approach to
the troubled region's political projections on capitalism. If
Au Revoir Taipei is exotic, then
Taipei Exchanges is definitely
quaint. In a movie where almost all if not most of the action (or rather
inaction) unfolds in a cafe just like
Kamome Diner (2006), we follow
Doris (Kwai Lun Mei,
Secret, 2007), an office girl who quits her job
to start a cafe but finds the place turnin into a junkyard business due
to elaborate exchange-only arrangements that serendipitously
happen. Her slacker of a sister Josie (Lin Zai Zai) plays no small part
in this barter bizarro, which somehow turns the place into a buzzin
pitstop of peculiar camaraderie. There's also some romantic subplots
mixed into the theme, like a man (Chang Han) who wants to trade bars of
soap.
Bad news on the doorstep:
 |
| What the fuck are we gonna do with this place? |
The gastronomic appeal of
Taipei Exchanges starts
wearing thin somewhere midway and the sisters' laments turn tiresome
quickly, although they may not be trivial. The crux of the story is the
interplay between the sisters (maybe even their disapprovin mother) and
their conflictin values but this projection is far too weak and too
cute to capture an audience that demands deeper drama.
Reminds me of:
Small cafes like Wondermilk in Uptown Damansara.
Amacam joker, berapa bintang lu mau kasi?
It's
a pretty picture alright - but the dreamy approach might just have been
a tad too detached and loses us at the end. A recommended watch only
for viewers who enjoyed
Look For A Star (2009) more than
A Place Of One's Own (2009).
Bad news on the doorstep:
_010.jpg)
Posts
