Lee Kang-Sheng Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Three intriguing titles top my list of indie films to check out this week on DVD. Coincidentally, two of them feature actors who also directed (or directors who also acted).

Taiwanese film Help Me Eros, directed by and starring Lee Kang-Sheng, became slightly notorious at the Toronto film festival because droves of otherwise hardy film critics walked out of a press screening, either out of boredom or disgust. Ryan Stewart stayed, even though the first scene made him consider vomiting and the film as a whole was an unpleasant experience. Any film that provokes that strong a reaction, of course, makes it a perfect choice for adventurous renters who don't mind gambling a few dollars on the possibility that they'll never finish watching the movie. (The plot doesn't really matter in this case, does it?) DVD extras are limited to various trailers.

The English-language Big Dreams, Little Tokyo, directed by and starring Dave Boyle, is a culture clash comedy. Boyle plays a man who wants to become a language instruction guru, while his Japanese American roommate (Jason Watabe) wants to become a Sumo wrestler despite his slight build. KJ Doughton at Film Threat gave it a four-star rating ("a fresh filmic entree"). DVD extras include an audio commentary, behind the scenes interviews and "making of" footage, deleted scenes, web spots, and more.

French flick Heartbeat Detector (AKA La Question Humaine), directed by Nicolas Klotz, arrives with little fanfare that I can recall, though it did enjoy a brief, limited theatrical run earlier this year, and Scott Foundas admired "its epic sense of humanity" in the pages of The Village Voice. Mathieu Amalric (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) plays a company psychiatrist with odd methods of motivating the corporate troops. DVD extras appear to be non-existent.

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.

The world outside of Taiwan and Malaysia is going to get a chance to see Lee Kang-Sheng's second directorial effort, Help Me Eros. Fortissimo Films just nabbed the worldwide distribution rights outside of those two areas. The feature is described as "a provocative, darkly comic and sexually daring film," written by Lee and produced by long-time collaborator Tsai Ming-Liang. Fortissimo co-chairman Wouter Barendrecht says: "We have known Lee Kang-Sheng for a long time... So it is very exciting to see him blossom into his own as a world-class director with this daring, hilarious and shockingly explicit film."

What makes it so provocative? According to this site, the film follows the dysfunctional lives of three people -- Nick, a drug addict who used to work in the stock market, Maria, a rape victim who now helps people on a telephone hotline and Fion, a nut seller. Basically, Nick falls for Maria while they two talk about their problems on the hotline, and pursues a relationship with the woman (who has a struggling marriage to already contend with), and Fion and Nick have a drug-laden tryst. This is only the start of the dysfunction, and I must warn that the website is pretty detailed and spoilery about what happens to the three people. A trio who also don't really need any help from Eros, considering all the lust-laden choices they make. The site does, however, offer a pretty interesting director's statement, which can give you a little insight into what in the world Lee was going for -- "a story about three people who live in a big city in pursuit of a better material life, yet their inner selves remain cold and empty." There is no word on a release date yet.

In an era when most movie cameras seem to be moving more, jerking and jumping around, obscuring what they're supposed to be capturing, Tsai Ming-liang's camera grows ever more still, gazing boldly and steadily at a scene for so long that we get to know its every corner. In his 2004 masterpiece Goodbye Dragon Inn, I detected one, maybe two, moving shots. But in his latest film, I Don't Want to Sleep Alone, it doesn't even budge that much.

Tsai has never been one for telling linear, easily explained stories, but at least some of his earlier films had recognizable elements. In The River (1994), Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng) takes a job in a movie playing a corpse floating in the polluted Tanshui River and develops a mysterious and apparently incurable pain in his neck. In The Hole (1998), a virus has turned most of the population into human cockroaches, and a remaining human couple bonds when a hole opens up between their apartments. In What Time Is It There? (2001), a watch salesman dreams about a girl he has only barely met as she travels to Paris (he watches The 400 Blows on video and she meets the real life Jean-Pierre Leaud). And in Goodbye Dragon Inn, several lonely people pass a rainy night in a dilapidated movie theater on the last night of its existence.