Taipei Story
Taipei Story | |
---|---|
![]() Theatrical poster | |
Traditional | 青梅竹馬 |
Simplified | 青梅竹马 |
Mandarin | qīngméizhúmǎ |
Hokkien | chheng-mûi-tiok-má |
Literally | green plums and a bamboo horse[1] |
Directed by | Edward Yang |
Written by | Chu T’ien-wen Hou Hsiao-hsien Edward Yang |
Produced by | Huang Yung Lin Jung-feng Liu Sheng-chung |
Starring | Hou Hsiao-hsien Tsai Chin |
Cinematography | |
Edited by | Wang Chi-yang Sung Fan-chen |
Music by | Edward Yang |
Release date |
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Running time | 110 minutes |
Country | Taiwan |
Languages | Mandarin Hokkien |
Taipei Story is a 1985 Taiwanese film directed, scored, and co-written by Edward Yang — his second full-length feature film and third overall. The film stars Yang's fellow filmmaker Hou Hsiao-hsien and singer Tsai Chin, whom Yang subsequently married. It is one of the earliest films of the New Taiwanese Cinema.
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 original title, 青梅竹馬 "green plums and a bamboo horse", refers to Chinese plums and the childhood practice of riding a bamboo stick as a pretend horse. This idiom alludes to an 8th-century poem by Li Bai, and in China it refers to a childhood sweetheart.
Plot[]
A young woman (Tsai Chin) urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary Taipei, and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung (Hou Hsiao-hsien) is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.
Characters[]
- Tsai Chin - Chin, an office worker
- Hou Hsiao-hsien - Lung, a former baseball player
- Wu Nien-jen - Ch'en, a taxi driver and former baseball player
- - Ling
- - Gwan
- - Mr. Ke, an architect
- - Chin's mother
- - Chin's father
- Yang Li-yin - Ch'en's wife
- - Mrs. Mei
- - a coach
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."[4]
References[]
- ^ https://plus.google.com/+jenniferZhuECL/posts/ZbsbtUgzNh2
- ^ Anderson, Melissa (14 March 2017). "Past and Future Tug at an Unstable Present in a Restored Masterwork by Edward Yang". The Village Voice. Village Voice, LLC. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
- ^ "World Cinema Project". The Film Foundation. The Film Foundation. p. 2. Retrieved 3 April 2017.
Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project at Cineteca di Bologna/ laboratory...
- ^ Choi, Edo S.; Iovene, Paola, "A Time for Freedom: Taiwanese filmmakers in transition", Doc Films Spring 2009 Volume 3 Issue 3, Doc film society, University of Chicago, archived from the original on 9 June 2009, retrieved April 14, 2009
External links[]
- Taipei Story at IMDb
- Taipei Story (2017 re-release) at Box Office Mojo
- Taipei Story at Rotten Tomatoes
- Taipei Story: Modern Planning an essay by Andrew Chan at the Criterion Collection
- 1985 films
- Taiwanese films
- Mandarin-language films
- Films directed by Edward Yang
- Films with screenplays by Chu T’ien-wen
- Films set in Taipei
- Taiwanese film stubs