Lou xia de fang ke
Directed by:
Adam TsueiScreenplay:
Giddens KoCast:
Simon Yam, Ivy Shao, Phil Hou, Kang-Sheng Lee, Toyoharu Kitamura, Kaiser Chuang, Kai Feng, Vera Chen, Chun Sen, Alex Ko, Sophia Lu, Ryan Kuo, Sean Lin, An-Shun YuPlots(1)
The most hotly anticipated Taiwanese film of the year is a lurid fantasy of wounded flesh and accursed lives that entwine and separate in a building run by a landlord (Simon Yam), who seeks to find a particular type of tenant for the property he inherits from his relatives. Driven by his desire of peeping into the darkest aspects of human nature, what he sees through the eyes of the omnipresent cameras ain't pretty... but it gives him the wry, abject satisfaction of a dark god lording over and leering at the souls of the damned, his imagination hungering toward them. A devil-like figure, he patiently tends to the needs of a barbecue pit of deranged tenants: a gymnastics teacher with a record of domestic abuse; a shut-in college student who spends his days and nights in front of his computer screen; a sexually frustrated single father and his innocent young daughter; a mysterious ghostly girl in white; a gay couple trying to hide their relationship; and a sexy office worker who loses herself in an endless spiral of seedy love affairs. Violence and perverse desires come together in a writhing narrative based on a controversial book by writer Giddens Ko, recalling the golden age of Category III in the sweaty confines of a Taiwanese cinematic form. (Hawaii International Film Festival)
(more)Reviews (1)
As a series of weird, dark comedic scenes set in a block of flats, where a malevolent landlord fucks with his tenants in various perverse ways, it was fun. The craftsmanship is top-notch and the film manages to generate tension, disgust and amused grimaces. The problem is that it’s almost two hours long, with a weird ending that comes out of nowhere and a dim twist that leaves and even bigger mess than before.
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