Billed as the first Taiwanese movie to venture into thriller territory in years, Zoom Hunting (獵豔), producer Cho Li’s (卓立) directing debut, looks like a promising commercial flick with its theme of voyeurism, explicit sex scenes and a star-studded cast that includes pop idols Ning Chang (張鈞甯) and Wen Sheng-hao (溫昇豪) and famous actors Chin Shih-chieh (金士傑) and Jack Kao (高捷). But an unimaginative story line and drab performances by the lead roles ruin the surprise.
The film begins with fashion magazine photographer Ruyi (Chang) taking snapshots from her balcony and inadvertently capturing a couple (Wen and Chou Heng-yin, 周姮吟) having sex. When she realizes the couple are adulterers, Ruyi can’t resist the urge to stalk them with her camera and share the discoveries with her novelist sister Ruxing (Chu Chih-ying, 朱芷瑩).
One night, the voyeur hears a loud argument from the couple’s room across the street and sees a man being knocked down by a woman. She calls the police, but nothing unusual is found.
Convinced that something did happen, Ruyi enlarges her photographs and discovers that her sister had been in the room earlier. Meanwhile, Ruxing overcomes her writer’s block and finishes an erotic thriller that involves the murder of a married man by his paramour.
Puzzled, Ruyi starts investigating and eventually confronts her sister about what really happened that night.
Zoom Hunting opens with an auspicious premise effectively delivered through fluid cinematography by Hong Kong’s Kwan Pun-leung (關本良), whose credits include Wong Kar-wai’s (王家衛) In the Mood for Love (花樣年華) and Ann Hui’s (�?�) July Rhapsody (男人四十). In the beginning of the film, Kwan’s aerial cinematography hovers over Ruyi’s apartment building and swoops down to close in on other characters whose identities will soon be revealed.
Thus director Cho takes merely a few minutes to pin down the setting and main characters — a group of ordinary people living in an ordinary neighborhood. That the mystery thriller unfolds through breakfast eateries, a neighborhood park, narrow alleys and other sights familiar to Taipei residents only adds to the allure.
But as the film proceeds, tension and suspense are gradually worn out by the director’s plain narrative skills and dull verbal explanations by the characters. This dramatic device works well on stage but seems abruptly out of place for the intended mood and pace of this film.
The wooden acting of Chang and Chu as the two sisters doesn’t help either. It is theater actress Chou’s natural performance and the explosive cameo of Michelle Krusiec as the cheating man’s wife that deliver much-needed flare.
Zoom Hunting makes a decent stab at exploring a rarely touched upon genre, but the suspense dwindles early and drains emotion from what should be the pivotal, intensely charged scenes toward the end.
In the March 9 edition of the Taipei Times a piece by Ninon Godefroy ran with the headine “The quiet, gentle rhythm of Taiwan.” It started with the line “Taiwan is a small, humble place. There is no Eiffel Tower, no pyramids — no singular attraction that draws the world’s attention.” I laughed out loud at that. This was out of no disrespect for the author or the piece, which made some interesting analogies and good points about how both Din Tai Fung’s and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) meticulous attention to detail and quality are not quite up to
April 21 to April 27 Hsieh Er’s (謝娥) political fortunes were rising fast after she got out of jail and joined the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in December 1945. Not only did she hold key positions in various committees, she was elected the only woman on the Taipei City Council and headed to Nanjing in 1946 as the sole Taiwanese female representative to the National Constituent Assembly. With the support of first lady Soong May-ling (宋美齡), she started the Taipei Women’s Association and Taiwan Provincial Women’s Association, where she
It is one of the more remarkable facts of Taiwan history that it was never occupied or claimed by any of the numerous kingdoms of southern China — Han or otherwise — that lay just across the water from it. None of their brilliant ministers ever discovered that Taiwan was a “core interest” of the state whose annexation was “inevitable.” As Paul Kua notes in an excellent monograph laying out how the Portuguese gave Taiwan the name “Formosa,” the first Europeans to express an interest in occupying Taiwan were the Spanish. Tonio Andrade in his seminal work, How Taiwan Became Chinese,
Mongolian influencer Anudari Daarya looks effortlessly glamorous and carefree in her social media posts — but the classically trained pianist’s road to acceptance as a transgender artist has been anything but easy. She is one of a growing number of Mongolian LGBTQ youth challenging stereotypes and fighting for acceptance through media representation in the socially conservative country. LGBTQ Mongolians often hide their identities from their employers and colleagues for fear of discrimination, with a survey by the non-profit LGBT Centre Mongolia showing that only 20 percent of people felt comfortable coming out at work. Daarya, 25, said she has faced discrimination since she
RSS