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16 發光的城市 A R O U N D T O W N FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2008 • TIMES

Spotting Ingmar

Chang Chen, left, convincingly plays a man lost in a Kafkaesque quandary. Bergman  Photo courtesy of Cream Film Production

A retrospective of Ingmar Bergman films scheduled to run in Taipei and One night Taichung shows the many facets of one of the world’s great directors in Taipei

By Ho Yi Staff reporter hat’s the deal with people who double-park without leaving a note? Such curiosity led to the making of W Parking (停車), a blackly comic drama by seasoned television commercial director and cinematographer Chung Mong-hong (鍾孟宏). Set during one night in Taipei, Chung’s debut feature film, which boasts a cast of fine actors from and Hong Kong, opens with Chen Mo (Chang Chen, 張震) finding his car blocked in after he stops at a pastry shop on his way home for a dinner date with his estranged wife (Kwai Lun-mei, 桂綸鎂). The search for the double-parked vehicle’s driver takes Festival notes Chen through a chain of bizarre situations and a gallery of eccentric characters: a friendly one-armed barber (Jack Kao, What: Winter With Ingmar Bergman 高捷) with a shady past; an elderly couple who look after their young granddaughter and seem to mistake him for their 曾珮瑜 When and Where: Today through Dec. 12 at Spot long-lost son; a Chinese prostitute (Peggy Tseng, ) who is virtually imprisoned by her abusive pimp (Leon Dai, 戴立忍); — Taipei Film House (光點—台北之家), 18, Zhongshan and a Hong Kong tailor (Chapman To, 杜汶澤) who is on the run N Road Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市中山北路二段18號); from underground loan sharks. Dec. 16 to Dec. 21 at Wonderful Cinema (萬代福影城), 38 With richly colored tableaux and unusual camera movements Kungyuan Rd, Taichung City (台中市公園路38號) and framings, Chung’s cinematography creates a stylish effect that prevents the viewer from becoming too emotionally Tickets: NT$170 for members and NT$200 for engaged in the narrative. Enveloped in haunting contrasts non-members at Spot; screenings in Taichung are free of light and shadow, Taipei appears alien and inhabited by phantom-like loners and pale drifters. On the Net: www.twfilm.org/bergman Chen, a typical-looking white-collar urbanite, is seen casting a long Clockwise from above: stills from Ingmar Bergman films Cries and Whispers; headless shadow on a Parking (停車) Fanny and Alexander; The Seventh Seal; Summer With Monika; and Smiles of a barren street early in the Summer Night. Photos courtesy of Spot film, which is just one DIRECTED BY: Chung Mong-hong example of the well- (鍾孟宏) executed ways in which director Chung conveys STARRING: Chang Chen (張震) as the theme of estrangement Chen Mo, Kwai Lun-mei (桂綸鎂) in visual terms. as Chen’s wife, Jack Kao (高捷) as The protagonist’s one-armed barber, Leon Dai (戴立 Kafkaesque journey 忍) as pimp, Chapman To (杜汶澤) as sees him enter the Hong Kong tailor, Peggy Tseng lives and pasts of the (曾珮瑜) as Chinese prostitute other characters who seem to be trapped in a Language: in Mandarin and dilapidated apartment with Chinese and English subtitles building that is frozen in By Ho Yi time. The story’s sense of RUNNING TIME: 106 MINUTES Staff Reporter absurdity is accentuated by occasional bursts of TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY dark humor that include ngmar Bergman passed away on July In The Seventh Seal (1957), Through a Passion of Anna (1969) that occupy a key films, which in Hou’s words, “dare to venture an arresting episode involving a fish head. 30 of last year, the same day as Italy’s Glass Darkly (1960) and The Virgin Spring place in Bergman’s art, along with his 1966 into the deepest part of the soul.” As well as Chen’s frustrated attempt to extricate himself Michelangelo Antonioni. The world (1960), Bergman embarks on an existential masterpiece Persona. The trio signals the The gray-haired Hou attended a press from his predicament, the film takes on a political tone through has been mourning for the losses ever journey into mortality and faith, a leitmotif maestro’s inclination toward an image-driven conference earlier this month to promote the roles of trapped Taiwanese, lost Hong Kongers, and since in the form of retrospectives and he is best-remembered for, in a world of aesthetic, whereas most of his popular films the event as the Honorary President of the Chinese who become victims of capitalism, though the director Ifestivals. Starting today at Spot — Taipei despair and bleakness. appropriate a more melodramatic look to Taiwan Film and Culture Association (台灣電 avoids wearing his heart on his sleeve. Film House (光點—台北之家), POP Cinema (國 The imagery of four women strolling explore such topics as marriage, gender 影文化協會), the group behind POP Cinema. The film feels slightly too long and drags on towards 民戲院) presents 15 films made by Bergman, through a Swedish forest is immortalized in relationships and family. “When I was young I saw Bergman’s the end, while some scenes are less developed than others. many of which are early works that have Cries and Whispers (1973), the director’s “Even in his early works, Bergman films on Beta videotapes. It was pretty Parking’s coda is forced as its bright mood clashes with the never before been screened in Taiwan. homage to his mother, incarnated by three reveals a genius for expressing an event much the same scenes and characters so rest of the film. Openly acknowledging that his sisters and a servant. His most beloved film, or emotion through visuals rather than you fell asleep, woke up and fell asleep Without a solid cast the episodic story would not have experiences with women, frustrated Fanny and Alexander (1982), can be seen narrative. To me, it is where the power of again,” Hou said. “To me, all directors are worked. Two of Taiwan’s finest actors, Jack Kao 高捷( ) and marriages and family life were the source as the sum total of the director’s art as it his art lies,” Wang said. much more interesting in their early works. Leon Dai (戴立忍), stand out with their seemingly effortless of inspiration behind his works, the is here that Bergman returned to the most For Bergman novices there is no need to The older you get, the more mannered performances, while Hong Kong’s Chapman To lends the flick a Swedish maestro showed an early interest familiar themes — death, religion, family despair if the initial reaction to the movies your films become as you find the earlier Wong Kar Wai-esque tone. Chang Chen (張震), who is emerging in the motif of love and betrayal in films and the memory of his father. includes adjectives such as “obscure” and ‘you’ too immature and lean more toward as a serious actor, approaches the main character with a such as It Rains on Our Love (1946), To To festival curator Wang Pai-chang “abstruse.” Even the young Hou Hsiao-hsien abstractionism. This is why I think cinema proper sense of perplexity. Joy (1950), Sawdust and Tinsel (1953) (王派章), however, it is the The Hour of (侯孝賢) had to see them more than once in belongs to the young — unlike words, images Premiered this year in the ’s Un and Summer With Monika (1953). the Wolf (1968), Shame (1968) and The order to understand the Swedish director’s should be flesh-and-blood and visceral.” Certain Regard section, Parking establishes Chung as a new talent in Taiwanese cinema and a name to watch closely. Sin leaves many a mark in Cronenberg’s ‘’

with extreme danger. In the dips his toes into the end, however, the film prizes mainstream with a tale of the Russian mob Mortensen and his body — gaunt, muscular, naked, sliced up, By Martin Williams In , Eastern Promises branded, aroused — and this Staff reporter Mortensen played a model carries the film to a twist that Director David Cronenberg’s latest husband in rural America with DIRECTED BY: David Cronenberg takes it deep into Cronenbergland. film has arrived late in Taiwanese a past so terrible that he had to Cronenberg has brought theaters. Viggo Mortensen was transform himself mentally, even STARRING: Naomi Watts (Anna), Viggo Mortensen (Nikolai), some of the most gruesome nominated for Best Actor at physically, to escape. In Eastern Vincent Cassel (Kirill), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Semyon) fantasy images imaginable to this year’s Academy Awards Promises, Mortensen is Nikolai, an multiplex and art-house theaters for Eastern Promises after his ambitious Russian mafia kingpin RUNNING TIME: 100 MINUTES over the years ( alluring embodiment of a most in the making who has to muscle licking her newborn mutation repellent character won many in on his employers’ organization TAIWAN RELEASE: TODAY in , the exploding fans, but he was beaten at the post to get where he wants to go. This, head in , body-weapon by Daniel Day-Lewis, whose oil too, requires bodily change as part son and the organizer of the hit colors and congeniality of Semyon’s morphing in and man sociopath in There Will Be of a step up from his mundane at the barber shop, to claim the home are an illusion, while the the gynecological instruments in Blood was even more repellent. jobs for the mob: ritual tattooing head seat at the gangsters’ table. sinister intentions of Nikolai are Dead Ringers, for example), yet Late, indeed, but great. With and wounds from would-be Viggo Mortensen, right, applies his special brand of tough love. photo courtesy of catchplay Through all this, the survival of the more complex than they seem, yet in Eastern Promises even the A History of Violence and this assassins are among them. But his baby hangs in the balance, because unknowable to almost everyone. most bloodcurdling moments of film, Cronenberg has shifted a critical, inward change is hidden foreign mother dying as she gives Stahl), whose interest in the diary its existence poses a very big threat Cassel is fine as the ruffian blade meeting flesh and pioneering, intellectual, lifelong until late in the film. birth in a store. Midwife Anna and the baby drag Anna into to very dangerous people. undisciplined pretender to the bone seem discreet and concise. concern with the body — its At first, Nikolai is nowhere to (Naomi Watts) tends to the baby London’s Russian underworld. Eastern Promises is a throne, as is the rest of the cast, The emphasis here is not on strengths and frailties, its beauty be seen. The story starts with two that arrives at the hospital, and Nikolai also takes a keen mainstream film by Cronenberg’s though Watts comes across as bodily decay or dismemberment and all its horrid aberrations, grisly acts that seem unconnected: locates a diary that leads her to interest in Anna and the diary, even standards, yet it retains the cool, a plot catalyst rather than a but on how the body acts as a almost always intertwined — just the slaughter of a customer at a friendly old Russian restaurant as he maneuvers to usurp his boss detached eye that has marked his fully developed character with canvas for power, both physical a little inward. a barber shop and a very young owner, Semyon (Armin Mueller- Kirill (Vincent Cassel), Semyon’s films over the decades. The rich a credible motivation to flirt and moral.