Review | Fantasy World movie review: Joseph Chang, Lee Kang-sheng in moral drama with muddled view of adultery and sexual assault
- Joseph Chang and Lee Kang-sheng star in a story about the owner of a cram school who is accused of sexual assault and his lawyer
- Taiwan’s baffling adultery laws were still in force when the film was made, and this stodgy legal drama has an odd view of right and wrong
2/5 stars
Worthy subject matter doesn’t always result in a worthwhile movie, and that is the case with Freddy Tang Fu-jui’s stodgy legal drama Fantasy World, officially called Fantasy·World.
The questionable topic is Taiwan’s baffling stance on adultery, which was a criminal offence until just last year and treated the extramarital party in the affair as equally guilty of any wrongdoing as the married philanderer.
In a case that unfolds when adultery was still punishable by up to a year in prison, successful lawyer Zhang (Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan) learns that a former client, Tang (Lee Kang-sheng, a regular in Tsai Ming-liang films), the owner of a prestigious cram school, has been accused of sexually assaulting a female student (Wang Yu-ping).
Racked by guilt over his part in Tang’s acquittal in a similar case years earlier, Zhang agrees to take the case, only for it to stir up painful memories of his own involvement with another of Tang’s students back then, Xie Chen (Cammy Chiang Yi-jung).
It soon becomes apparent that Tang is a serial offender who has been wooing, deflowering, and then discarding impressionable teenage girls for years. He is wealthy, powerful, and largely unfazed by the accusations against him, confident that his accusers can either be bought off, or will be too scared to speak out publicly.