At face value, Foret Debussy is a stunningly shot Taiwanese version of Survivor, featuring mother-and-daughter duo Lu Yi-ching (陸弈靜) and Gwei Lun-mei (桂綸鎂), who are hiding deep in the forest due to a terrible tragedy that tortures them constantly.
Despite the backstory and despair-filled atmosphere, most of the actual sequences focus on them trying to survive and the hardships they face — from trying to fashion a canopy to shelter from the rain to fishing with hand-made rods to ingesting poison berries.
This is the first full-length feature by director Kuo Cheng-chui (郭承衢), who also cast Lu and Gwei as a mother and daughter eight years ago in his short film Family Viewing (闔家觀賞). Kuo calls Foret Debussy a “phytoncide film,” and green is indeed all you will see throughout. The title alludes to how composer Claude Debussy was deeply inspired by nature, and as you can image, his music features prominently in the film.
Photo courtesy of Warner Bros
Gwei plays the wan, silent and tortured persona perfectly, languishing in the past as her mother tries to keep them alive despite her own grief, which does erupt in bursts. The dialogue is sparse, but every sentence counts — we basically find out what happened through aural flashbacks and the few sentences exchanged between the two.
Here’s an example: “Did you ever think about the consequences?” Lu asks Gwei while she tries to unsuccessfully light a fire. After a very long pause, Gwei replies calmly, “You would have done the same.” Then they carry on with their tasks in silence, and finally Lu walks away.
This is a testament to the acting skills of the two protagonists as their sorrow, their complicated feelings toward each other and the suffocating tension surrounding them remain clear and powerful even though nothing significant is actually happening in the film. The otherworldly environment and surrealness of the whole situation also adds to the intrigue.
There also seems to be an environmental protection theme behind the film, but is only directly alluded to in two sequences. Perhaps showing the fact that there are still such pristine and untouched landscapes in Taiwan is enough.
Unfortunately, the story stops halfway through the film. There are no more flashbacks, or any dialogue at all for that matter, as it becomes sort of a vehicle for Gwei to show off her acting chops (which will probably win her some acting awards) and the production team to flaunt their brilliant visuals. It meanders on and on, and all the tension and intrigue that made the first half interesting turns into pure anguish and desperation, and one starts to wonder what is the point of the film and where it is going.
At first, the camera sequences work beautifully with the lush scenery, using a mix of static shots, wide pans and hand-held camera closeups while playing with depth of field to create compelling moods and effects. A memorable sequence takes place when Gwei’s character reminisces of a past conversation while standing with her face very close to a tree. The camera zooms in on her face, then circles the tree in an extreme close-up fashion where we can clearly see the moss, bark and leaves and slowly returns to Gwei’s face from the other side as the memory concludes.
But that was when there was still a story. As the film moves on and the story completely stops, these techniques become vanity flourishes as they lose their connotation. Soon, the endless greenery turns claustrophobic — which is probably the director’s intent, but it could have been handled in a more eventful way. While it is an arthouse film, the way the story is revealed in the first half already departs from the norm enough while still being entertaining. Sometimes you don’t have to go further than that.
Two news items over the past few days got only limited traction in the news media either locally or internationally, but to long-time Taiwan observers both were attention-grabbing. Connecting the dots, I came to the conclusion that though seemingly unrelated, the two very much are and signal a sharp escalation of a diplomatic war between China and a group of American-led nations over the status of Taiwan that has been building in intensity for some time now. Though there is a chance that the surfacing of a People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 094 Jin class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine
The latest round of escalation by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in its conflict with the Philippines illuminates its plans for its numerous other territorial claims. Swallowing most of the South China Sea, annexing more than a tenth of Bhutan, grayzoning the Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台), known as the Senkaku Islands in Japan, these activities differ only in the specifics of their methods, the major factor being the presence or absence of the US. The US factor is the least predictable. The violence against Filipino vessels resupplying a Filipino ship in a Philippines EEZ, which surely must constitute piracy on the
On Friday last week, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency very excitedly proclaimed “a set of judicial guidelines targeting die-hard ‘Taiwan independence’ separatists” had been issued “as a refinement and supplement to the country’s ‘Anti-Secession’ law” from 2005, with sentencing guidelines that included the death penalty as an option. At the same time, 77 People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) aircraft were flown into Taiwan’s air defense identification zones (ADIZ) in just 48 hours, a high enough number to indicate the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was peeved about something and wanted it known. What was puzzling is that the CCP always
July 1 to July 7 Huang Ching-an (黃慶安) couldn’t help but notice Imelita Masongsong during a company party in the Philippines. With paler skin and more East Asian features, she did not look like the other locals. On top of his job duties, Huang had another mission in the country, given by his mother: to track down his cousin, who was deployed to the Philippines by the Japanese during World War II and never returned. Although it had been more than three decades, the family was still hoping to find him. Perhaps Imelita could provide some clues. Huang never found the cousin;