Niu Cheng-tse Movies
- 1999
- NR
Two young people begin a tragic love affair against a backdrop of political turmoil in Lin Cheng-sheng's Xingfu Jinxingqu. In 1945, Taiwan is under Japanese occupation and Yu (Hsiao Shu-shen), a merchant's daughter who is a member of a theater troupe, falls in love with a musician named Jin (Lim Giong) who works with her group. However, Yu's father is not pleased, as he hopes she will some day wed Ren-chang (Yang Cai-hsia), the son of a prominent doctor. When Allied forces begin bombing Taiwan, the players are forced to disband, and Yu and Jin do not see each other for two years. When they do, a great deal has changed; the Kuomintang, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, have established a Chinese-directed government in Taiwan, and local dialects are forbidden while residents are forced to speak Mandarin. Despite the new hardships, Yu and Jin renew their love and pledge to marry on Feb. 28, 1949 -- a day now remembered in Taiwan for a bloody massacre in which the Kuomintang forces attacked helpless Taiwanese citizens. Xingfu Jinxingqu was Lin Cheng-sheng's fourth film to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival, and his first to be screened in official competition. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lim Giong, Hsiao Shu-shen, (more)
Issues of modern romance and personal identity are played for intelligent laughter in this tart comedy from Taiwan. Wu (played by Rene Liu) is a businesswoman in her early 30's whose professional life is going just fine. It's her personal life that's giving her problems. Since she's not meeting the right sort of man in her daily life, she decides to take the bull by the horns and place a personal ad in the newspaper; she gets over 100 responses to her ad, and much of the film is taken up by her meetings with a variety of men who want to know more about her. Her potential suitors range from a restaurant manager with a shoe fetish and a writer who his brings his mother along to a would-be rock star and a lesbian in male drag. Director Chen Kuo-Fu was a leading Taiwanese film critic in the 1980's before moving to filmmaking in the early 1990's. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Chen Chao-Jung, Wu Pai, (more)
- 1996
Off-beat and comical, this whimsical Chinese tale is set towards the end of the Ching dynasty in a dusty northwestern village comprised of criminals and social outcasts. The government sends the people there to keep them away from prosperous law-abiding citizens. The governor of the area, uses his citizenry for his own gain. The fun begins when two youths head for a neighboring town to pilfer exam papers. While there, they steal two gold nuggets believed to have belonged to the legendary bandit Miao San-shun. Not wanting a row, the governor launches a cover-up. He then begins searching for Miao who is said to still live somewhere in the area. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- 1995
Two young women find themselves unable to deal with the realities of their contemporary existence and so retreat into the colorful world of a classical Chinese opera from the Ming Dynasty, The Peony Pavilion to find solace in this Taiwanese drama. The film chronicles each woman's story separately. The first story centers on a teen-age virgin in her senior year of high school. Du is a hard worker who is inexorably being forced into the arms of a classmate. Meanwhile her sexuality begins to blossom. Unfortunately, she is not allowed to express this and so begins to fantasize that she is the heroine in the popular opera. In the story the girl is the sheltered daughter of an official who frequently wanders a beautiful garden dreaming of making love to a handsome scholar. Soon Du is totally obsessed with the heroine. She convinces herself that if she kills herself she will finally be able to meet the scholar in the afterlife and so hurls herself from a rooftop. In the second tale, pop singer Liu attempts to cope with her disintegrating career. She also deals with her producer-lover who is quickly drawing away from her. Liu also begins to daydream about the opera. She relates to the scholar and like the girl before her, soon finds herself obsessively becoming the character. Nothing and no one can stop her. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- 1983
In this ethnic drama with a sketchy storyline but an engaging sense of time and place, three young men leave their rural island homes looking for better economic opportunities and perhaps a little more excitement. From their listless life on the small island of Fenggui, off the coast of Taiwan, the three arrive in the city of Gaoxiung where they find temporary shelter at the home of the sister of one of them. She also helps them get jobs in a factory -- a good sign for the future. As they settle into city life, the man next door takes off to evade the police who are after him, and his wife is left alone. She and one of the three men soon establish a tentative relationship -- though their future together seems uncertain. Director Hou Hsiao-hsien is well-recognized for his talent, and if viewers read between the lines they may see references to the split between native Taiwanese speaking their own languages and the mainland Mandarin speakers who invaded the island in 1949 to set up a government in exile. Antagonism between the Taiwanese, who were at first excluded from many important government jobs, and the mainland Chinese, who were at first foreigners, was an open and acknowledged problem for decades. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Niu Cheng-tse, Lin Hsiao-Ling, (more)
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