1985 Taiwanese film
Taipei Story (Chinese: 青梅竹馬) is a 1985 Taiwanese film directed by Edward Yang — his second full-length feature film and third overall. The film stars Hou Hsiao-hsien and singer Tsai Chin to depict the grinding relationship of Ah-lung and Ah-chen, who have known each other since childhood in Taipei. It is doomed to fail because Ah-lung cannot forget about the past while Ah-chen is eager to embrace the future as Taipei undergoes modernization and globalization. Taipei Story is one of the representative films of the New Taiwanese Cinema. It won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 38th Locarno Film Festival in 1985.[1]
In the United States, Janus Films gave a limited release of the film's 4K restoration, done by the World Cinema Project, on March 17, 2017.[2][3]
Title
The literal meaning of the Chinese title, Qing Mei Zhu Ma (青梅竹馬) is a Chinese idiom, "green plums and a bamboo horse". It alludes to an 8th-century poem by Li Bai, and is used to refer to a childhood sweetheart. The English title Taipei Story marks the theme of the failed love story: the Taipei City, which is the common theme in all of Edward Yang’s films, including notably The Terrorizers (恐怖份子; 1986) and A One and A Two (一一; 2000).
Plot
Ah-chen (played by Tsai Chin) works as a senior assistant for a construction company about to be acquired and merged. Her boss, Mrs. Mei, leaves the company but does not have a new job for Ah-chen, forcing her to quit when faced with becoming a mere secretary. Ah-chen pities her mother who lives as a concubine to her irresponsible chauvinist father. But she is determined to leave the confining family as soon as possible and rents an apartment away from the house, giving a spare set of keys to Ah-lung, her childhood sweetheart (played by Hou Hsiao-hsien). Ah-lung owns a cloth shop at Dihua Street and is a former little league baseball player of the national team.
While Ah-chen plans to immigrate to the US with Ah-lung to join his brother-in-law for import business, Ah-lung is not too keen on moving. When Ah-lung comes back from a visit to the US, Ah-chen becomes more and more frustrated by his passivity regarding their plans to immigrate.
Ah-lung is a conservative and generous person who remains nostalgic about his past glory of winning the Little League World Series and goes out of his way to help Ah-chen’s father pay back his debts, help his impoverished baseball teammate get his gambling wife to come back home, and help his former lover Ah-gwan settle her divorce lawsuit. He and Ah-chen seem to live in two different worlds, hers a western and modern one and his a local and traditional one.
While Ah-lung goes around the city undecided about the trip, Ah-chen gives her sister money to have an abortion and her mother some money to pay off some of her father's debts. She also keeps an ambiguous relationship with a married architect in her former company who told her he was going to get a divorce. Ah-chen soon discovers that Ah-lung had been to Tokyo to meet Ah-gwan on his way back from the US. She slaps him on the face when he comes to her apartment which causes Ah-lung to break up with her. Ah-lung falls to gambling and drinking. When he visits his friend again who tells him how his gambling wife killed herself, Ah-lung severely mocks him for crying. Meanwhile Ah-chen finds some solace in her younger sister’s gang of delinquent youths. She has a good time partying and bike-riding, then finds out that the architect ended up never leaving his wife. When the group goes out dancing, Ah-chen sits to the side and cries.
One of the young men in the sister’s gang develops a crush on Ah-chen and begins waiting for her in front of her apartment. One night, Ah-chen sees the young man in front of her apartment building and goes to the karaoke bar to call Ah-lung for help. Once Ah-lung takes her back to her apartment, Ah-chen invites him in hoping they can get back together. She asked him to marry her, but Ah-lung turned her down by saying that neither marriage nor immigration is any cure for their problems.
On his way out Ah-lung sees the young man outside Ah-chen’s apartment. He tells him to stop stalking her and takes a taxi to go back to his place on Yangming mountain. The young man followed him on his motorbike, and Ah-lung leaves the taxi to beat him up. The two have a fight on the mountain road, ending in the young man stabbing Ah-lung and riding way. Ah-lung wanders the empty road bleeding and stops to sit by a pile of trash. In the pile is an old TV set which begins to play a news reel of Ah-lung's little league glory. He lights a cigarette and chuckles. It is implied that his body is discovered the next morning.
Ignorant of Ah-lung’s death, Ah-chen accompanies Mrs. Mei to inspect a new office space for the local branch of a US electronic company she plans to set up. In contrast to Mrs. Mei’s excitement for the new prospect, Ah-chen stares out the window at a loss regarding her future with Ah-lung.
Production
The leading actress Tsai Chin fell in love with Edward Yang during the shooting and they got married in 1985.[4]
Hou Hsiao-hsien, who is the leading actor in the movie and one of the representative directors of Taiwan’s new wave cinema,[5] used to be a friend of Edward Yang.[4] Hou’s character and performance inspired Edward Yang to write the script of Taipei Story and the characteristics of Ah-lung refer to the personal experience of Hou Hsiao-hsien.[6]
At that time, Yang did not have enough money to make Taipei Story. Hou Hsiao-hsien invested 3 million in the production. The box office of the film was so bad that it was only screened for four days in theaters.
Hou Hsiao-hsien’s performance in Taipei Story was his first acting experience on screen. It was impressive enough to get him nominated for the Best Leading Actor at the 22nd Golden House Awards. He fell short for the award, which was granted to Hong Kong star Donald Chow Yun Fat (周潤發), who got one more vote than he from the juries.[6]
The film was digitally restored (4K) by the World Cinema Foundation Project in association with Taiwan Film Institute (now Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Center), Royal Film Archive of Belgium, and Hou Hsiao-hsien in 2017.
Awards
Hou Hsiao-hsien is nominated for the Best Leading Actor and Yang Wei-han for the Best Cinematography at the 22nd Golden Horse Awards.[7] The film won the FIPRESCI Prize at the 38th Locarno Film Festival in 1985.[1]
Themes
According to the Doc Film Society, the film "displays Yang's uncompromising critique of the middle-class with its dissection of its heroine's emotional fragility, vainly disguised behind the sunglasses she sports day and night. As she flees the past, her boyfriend idealistically clings to it, a Confucian rigidity toward which Yang bears still less patience."[8]
