Review | Chen Uen movie review: Taiwanese comic artist celebrated in documentary guilty of providing a jarring lack of insight
- Chen Uen, who died in 2017, was an enigmatic talent known for drawing from traditional Chinese wuxia narratives to realise his distinctive manhua designs
- Director Wang Wan-jo struggles with representing the artist on-screen, with most of the film surrendered to people sharing scattershot memories of him
2/5 stars
Audiences unfamiliar with the work of Chen Uen, the celebrated Taiwanese comic book artist, may emerge from Wang Wan-jo’s lengthy documentary still relatively unenlightened. The film is less successful in its efforts to paint a picture of his life and career than it is in providing a podium for a wide assembly of colleagues, peers and fans from across the industry to eulogise the man, who died in 2017, at the age of 58.
Chen is most fondly remembered for eschewing the Japanese manga style of comic book artistry that was proving increasingly popular in the late 20th century, instead drawing from traditional Chinese wuxia narratives to realise his distinctive manhua designs.
Ironically, Chen’s elaborate and evocative style earned him work in Japan, while failing to make much of an impact at home in Taiwan. His work would also bring him to Hong Kong, and later to Beijing where he became involved in the emerging video game industry, but he seemed incapable of finding a gratifying balance between his exhausting work ethic and public recognition.
Wang’s previous documentary, A Foley Artist, succeeded in creating an absorbing and satisfying portrait of a solitary artist, in this case veteran sound engineer Hu Ding-yi, at work in a fast-disappearing field. Without Chen’s participation here, Wang seems unsure how best to represent the artist on-screen.
