Tigerwomen at the Taipei Film Festival

I went to watch the Tigerwomen at the Taipei Film Festival today. It's a documentary on three Taiwanese women, an old Chinese opera singer who was sold by her parents to an opera troupe when she was four; a writer whose most famous book I read when I was 17 and a 23-year-old movie director who had a smashing success here last year with a gay love story. I became friends with the director, Monika Treut, last year when she asked if she could stay with me for a couple of weeks and so got to hear a lot about the preparation and some of the filming.

Apart from the personal thing, the nice thing about a movie like this is that it depicts the Taipei I know and live in, in small things like shots of areas I know, pictures of the ubiquitous motor scooters, scenes from movies I've seen or the many references to the Presidential elections that of course were a big topic last year.

Yesterday, I went to watch Wayward Cloud, the latest movie by Taiwanese director Tsai Mingliang. Tsai Mingliang is famous for not having much dialogue in his movies, and I usually love movies like that. However, watching his renowned What time is it there? left me really bored (It seems to be one of those movies that are a success overseas because of their shere foreignness). But though there is even less dialogue in Wayward Cloud, it's impossible to get bored with that movie. I just loved how he manages to express so much about Taiwan and Taiwanese without using any words. The final scenes were a little bit too much for me, though. Anyway, surprise, surprise, after the movie, Tsai Mingliang turned up at the theater, and I happened to meet the Taiwanese personality that I have been wanting to shake hands with ever since I moved to Taiwan (I poured his little brother wine once, completely forgot about that and, a few weeks ago, happened to come across an old post of mine on Forumosa where I had posted that). He is very nice, very Taiwanese and not at all as aloof as you would think somebody would be who has that much success with his movies. I got myself some melon juice on the way home.

The day before yesterday, it was Stupeur et Tremblements, after the autobiography of Amelie Nothomb. I've read quite a few of her books and enjoyed them, a) because she's obviously a little crazy and b) because her French is so easy to read for me. The movie was veeery close to the book, and I think Sylvie Testud did a great job as Amelie-San. But all in all, it was a bit boring, and my main peeve was the voiceover. At least to me, it didn't seem necessary at all, on the contrary, rather annoying. Before the movie, I bumped into two French guys who said they didn't like it because the Japanese were depicted so badly. I guess it is indeed a bit unlikely that a Westerner working in Japanese company would have that much bad luck. But she does manage to make about every mistake a Westerner could make, I guess. And watching her with the calculator made me cringe. I perfectly know that feeling when you calculate the same numbers ten times and get a different result every time.