TIFF Review: Help Me Eros

The opening image of Help Me Eros, from Taiwanese director Kang-sheng Lee, could very well make you vomit. On a television cooking show -- who knows if this is completely dreamed up or something that's actually going on -- we see a carp fish being prepared as a dish while still alive, gulping for air. This jarring image is only the first of many in a film that could be charitably called disjointed and uncharitably called intentionally confusing. Kang-sheng stars, if you want to call it that, as a young man named Ah Jie who seemingly drifts in and out of a fantasy world that's as impenetrable as a dream. Throughout the film there are scenes of pornographic, acrobatic sex -- upside down, at one point -- that, while interesting have little to do with narrative. Mostly, the film seems to chronicle the mental wanderings and preoccupations of a man with a disposable income, a penchant towards creative sexual fantasies and a dream-like disconnect to the happenings or concerns of the real world. At least, that's how I see it.

The two recurring signposts on Jie's fantasy highway are Jane Liao, a plump woman who operates a help line and who, at one point in the story, will step into a bathtub full of eels -- again, don't ask -- and an attractive young woman played by Yin Shin, who works at some kind of elevated, outdoor snack stand. Shin has a recurring motif that, although inscrutable, did provoke lots of laughter at my screening. She has a stripper pole that she slides down a few feet to get to street level whenever necessary, and the film gives her many opportunities to perform this feat. Are these two women supposed to represent opposites on some kind of societal or sexual spectrum? Are they both acting as sirens, calling Jie towards different avenues or decisions in life? I have no idea. There's some vague stabs at plot towards the beginning -- I think Jie is a stock trader who went belly-up, and that's why he reaches out to Liao. Overall, however, as a director Kang-sheng is uninterested in coherent narrative.

Leaning on impressive visuals is something I have no problem with -- Terrence Malick didn't become a legend thanks to his films' super-compelling narratives -- there has to be some kind of fit to the puzzle pieces if any sort of emotional sense is to be made of the film. More often than not, Kang-sheng's startling imagery seems intended to shock and to provoke a Pavolivian response rather than to service the film in any way that's more complex than that. Consider a scene later in the film that's stylistically almost identical to the live carp cooking demonstration -- we see an ostrich egg broken onto a frying pan, and out spills a baby ostrich onto the pan. At some point, the audience begins to wince and to disconnect from the film when imagery like that is all that's in the cards. On the other hand, some of Kang-sheng's visuals are more creative and full of promise; I especially liked the moment when a sky full of lottery tickets rains down on the drab city.

I've seen mass walk-outs in films before, but not typically during film festival press screenings, where anyone who is there is usually prepared for anything. I feel obligated to point out, however, that my screening of Help Me Eros became the talk of Toronto when, after the first ten minutes or so, a slow and steady procession began towards the exits. That train of people kept going, on and on, prompting me to occasionally look around to see if I was the only one actually left. By the end of the screening, I'd say around half of what began as a full house was still present, so make of that what you will. For my money, Help Me Eros has some intriguing imagery, but that's all it is -- imagery, largely divorced of any meaningful context. Much like the films of Matthew Barney, it's almost unfair to judge it in the manner of a traditional narrative film. You'll need to put on your art critic hat in order to give the film a truly fair shake.