Make Up

A big “Hello” to you all at the Girl’s Coffee Shop, and many thanks to Saffron for inviting me to join you all here.  It seems I am considered a worthy and housebroken “tame” male, so I will do my best to live up to those expectations.  The who and what and wherefores about me are unimportant, all you need to know is that I have my own little blog and for the last couple of years I have been talking on it with varying degrees of regularity about one of the loves of my life – Asian Cinema (and occasionally TV shows). 

Deep in the history over at ThingsFallApart you can find out all about how I got into this, so I will not bore you now.  I am not totally sure what Saffron thinks I can add to your lovely little community, but I thought I would start by talking about what I know – Asian Movies.  I’ll pretty much keep it in the style I have used for the last couple of years over at my site, and if it works for you all, i will continue to occasionally drop my thoughts over here.  Just to show my appreciation for being invited, I thought I would talk about the last film I watched, which actually is rather appropriate for this site – a Taiwanese Lesbian Love Story Noir.

Asian Cinema is not really that different to Western Cinema.  People Act.  Directors Direct.  And people like me put up with subtitles.  One of the things I hope has come out of my blog is to show there is a lot more about Asian Cinema than Chop-Socky Kung Fu films.  And that there are really good Chop-Socky Kung Fu films.  I also like to show there is a thriving industry in all regions of Asia – whilst I may concentrate on the cinema of Hong Kong, Mainland China, Japan and South Korea, I do occasionally have a little look at films from the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand and Taiwan.  Taiwan obviously has an interesting Political situation, but one result of this is that their films can tread in areas that other Chinese speaking countries cannot, most obviously in their examination of homosexual themes.  Nowhere else in Asia will you find so many films that are brave enough (or even allowed) to examine Lesbian relationships.  The film I am going to witter on about now is not quite one of those, as it uses a Lesbian relationship to hang another story on, but it is done so very well that I thought I would like to share it with you all.

"Make Up” introduces us to Mortician Min-Hsiu (Nikki Hsieh).  Her job is to make the bodies of the recently deceased palatable visually to those who wish to mourn those they have lost (I am assuming the tradition in Taiwan is for open casket funerals).  She may apply make up, stich up wounds, even create prosthetics to make a body whole again.  The problem with poor Min-Hsiu is that she is very withdrawn and detached from humanity.  We see her only really converse with the bodies she is ‘repairing’, her only real relationship is with her Mother who is in a vegetative state.  One male co-worker is very keen on her, but she just ignores him.  A young female intern wants to learn from her, but again there is no connection.  Things change one day when she is presented with her latest case, someone she knows well – her old High School Music teacher, Chen Ting (Sonia Sui), who has apparently taken her own life.  As the story progresses we see that this was much more than a educational relationship – they had been lovers when Min-Hsiu was 17, so not only a taboo sexually, but also professionally and with an age gap.  She is then approached by an unorthodox Policeman (Bryant Chang) who suspects that this was not a suicide, and that the husband of Chen Ting (Wu Chung-tien) has had a hand in his wife’s death.

This really is a lovely looking film, with beautifully crafted shots and interesting camerawork.  Yet, that is not unusual in Asian Cinema, and I would have been more surprised if it had not looked so accomplished, even if this is Director Lien Yi-chi’s first time in the Director’s chair in his own right.  It also feels almost Korean in its execution, as it mashes up genres – part meditation on life and death,  part very tender lesbian romance and part Noir thriller.  For me it all held together very well, with the first half of the film being very strong, and the almost underwhelming denouement seemed absolutely the correct thing to do. 

As the main story progresses, little incidents remind Min-Hsiu of her first love, and we are taken back to happier times – a picnic, a rainbow, a birthday gift, a visit to a tattoo parlour.  All wonderfully executed, always lingering just the right amount of time.

Central to this is the performance of Model/Actress Nikki Hsieh. She almost plays two different characters – the 17 year old girl, full of live and love and hopes and dreams, along with her older self, detached and carrying a huge burden of regret.  Credit too must go to Sonia Sui, who manages to be both a caring lover and in later life someone struggling with great mental illness.  Bryant Chang is a little OTT as the Policeman, but as his story progresses, we see he too is a man on the edge.  Only Wu Chung-tien lets down the show a little, as he is terribly wooden – but this may well be a deliberate ploy to both arouse suspicion and to show how deeply he actually feels his loss (and his eventual betrayal).

As it is probably clear by now, I adored this film.  I also know that it will divide opinion – for some the eventual unravelling of the plot will underwhelm, the reasons behind the death and the actions of the various parties are not some huge great conspiracy, it is just about life and being human.  Just as the journey finally allows Min-Hsiu to get on with her life, the film teaches us something about moving forward, to remember the past, but to use it to teach us how to move forward.  As she is more aware than most of us – you really are a long time dead.  Highly recommended.

[I hope you got something out of this, let me know if it works for this site]