Prince of Tears
Starring: Fan Chih-wei, Terri Kwan, Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan, Zhu Xuan Director: Yonfan Category: IIB (Mandarin)
A chapter of Taiwan's past serves as an intriguing backdrop to a lush 1950s melodrama, one of writer-director Yonfan's more complex works. A filmmaker who blurs the line between kitsch and art, Yonfan ranks among Hong Kong cinema's most unique auteurs. For a quarter century he has controlled every aspect of his oeuvre, presenting an overripe view of life and romance where heartbreak is exquisite and true love seldom attained.
Occasionally, as with the gay and transgender themes of Bishonen (1998) and Bugis Street (1995), he incorporates offbeat subject matter that endows the gloss with an extra layer of depth. Such is the case with Prince of Tears, a Taiwan-Hong Kong co-production and Hong Kong's selection for contention in next year's Oscar race for best foreign-language film.
Displaying the director's characteristic combination of soap opera, camp, sumptuous visuals and ravishing actors, Prince of Tears attains greater intricacy due to the narrative's 1954 timeframe. It was the height of the Kuomintang's White Terror, a period seldom dealt with on screen, during which thousands were falsely accused and executed for supposed communist subversion in a witch hunt that ironically mirrored far more virulent ones taking place on the mainland.
Not surprisingly, the movie is anything but a political treatise, dealing with the impact of these events on the deeply tangled relationships between its attractive protagonists, told largely from the perspective of their pre-adolescent children.
The scenario, based on real events and the director's memories of growing up in Taiwan, centres on a seemingly model military family living near an air force base outside Taichung. The handsome pilot father (Joseph Chang) and his beautiful spouse (Zhu Xuan) are parents to two girls, one of whom becomes best friends with the daughter of an aged general (Kenneth Tsang) and his young wife (Terri Kwan, above). Menace rears its head in the form of the pilot's physically and mentally scarred best friend (Fan Chih-wei), a member of the government's National Security Bureau. They're swept up in currents that change their lives even more than the vicissitudes that brought them to Taiwan five years earlier.
While the pace drags during the feature's excessive two-hour running time, the director's voiceover narration provides an exposition that goes a long way towards filling the gaps.
Throughout, there are a number of nice touches, from the era's small luxuries such as Coca Cola, skim milk and brown sugar, to such gorgeous images as a windswept sea of grass laden with tragic undertones for the elementary school's heartthrob teacher (Lin Yo-wei).
The characterisations are rather sketchy, with the juveniles coming across as more genuine than the adults. Most over-the-top, and most amusing, is the general's mate, a Shanghai glamourpuss whose accoutrements, from a fur coat to Louis XVI furniture, mark her as pure Yonfan.
Prince of Tears opens on Oct 22
