Director Chang Tso-chi’s (張作驥) cinematic world is usually populated by social underdogs, gangsters and men trapped in vicious cycles of violence. But in When Love Comes (當愛來的時候), his newest film, females take center stage in a tale that follows the road to reconciliation and understanding that the members of an extended family travel down.
Chang’s latest drama begins with 16-year-old Laichun (Li Yi-chieh, 李亦捷) walking through a bustling eatery in a traditional market. We quickly learn it’s a family business and the voice and thoughts of the teenage girl transport us into her hectic family life.
Her father, Dark Face (Lin Yu-shun, 林郁順), comes from a poor family in Kinmen and married Xue Feng (Lu Xue-feng, 呂雪鳳), whose wealthy family lacks a male heir. Xue Feng is infertile and allows Dark Face to keep his childhood lover Zhihua (He Zi-hua, 何子華), who bears him two daughters (Laichun and Lairi) and a boy, as a concubine. They all live together under one roof, but home life is far from easygoing.
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings
Jie, Dark Face’s autistic younger brother, moves in with the family, causing yet more squabbles. Domestic quarrels soon turn into a full-blown crisis when Laichun becomes pregnant and her boyfriend disappears.
The family’s females- — its powerful matriarch, dutiful mistress and teenager struggling to come to terms with the abrupt end to her adolescence — dominate the house. Dark Face is meek but thoughtful, a henpecked figure dissimilar to any of the father characters in Chang’s previous works, which include drunks, gamblers and irresponsible men who abandon their families.
Chang’s trademark fatalism mellows when toward the end of the film tragedy strikes and the women band together, offering each other solace.
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings
The director imbues his characters with warmth and humor and constructs an authentic family setting that could easily have veered off into the melodramatic in less talented hands.
Known for his cold treatment of the world in films like The Best of Times (美麗時光, 2002) and Soul of a Demon (蝴蝶, 2008), and giving his desperate protagonists magical moments that allow them to temporarily escape the cruelty of their lives, with When Love Comes the director seems to have broken many of his filmmaking habits.
Photo courtesy of Swallow Wings
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had