Rating: 4/5
Asian Cinema Challenge 2023 | 16/52 | Taiwanese New Wave Cinema
Gao Wai-Tung’s mother hurt her shoulder, so she records a tape of all the family updates to send to Wai-Tung in America. He listens to it while doing his gym routine. On the tape, his mother voices her desire for him to marry, and his father’s desire for him to have a child. So, they enrolled Wai in a Taipei dating service. Little do they know that Wai-Tung is in a relationship with Simon — the two live together in Manhattan. Simon is frustrated because the two had planned a trip for months, but Wai cancelled at the last minute due to a sudden work obligation.
Wai is a landlord in Williamsburg. After dinner with Simon, he stops by to check on things. He rings his tenant, Wei-wei, to let him in so he can collect rent from her. She tries to pay with one of her abstract paintings, but Wai won’t have it. However, after seeing the awful conditions she’s living in (it isn’t zoned for residency) and hearing about her job loss due to an immigration scare, he decides to take one of her paintings as rent. As he leaves, Wei-wei asks him to ask Simon to find a rich boyfriend for her.
That night, Wai fills out the mail-in paperwork for the Taipei dating service, detailing his “ideal woman.” Simon doesn’t understand why Wai won’t come out to his family. Still, Wai and Simon fill out the form with impractical asks: a 2 PhD-holding opera singer who speaks five languages. Amazingly, the dating service finds a woman named Mao Mae who meets almost all the requirements (she only holds one PhD). Wai’s parents fly her out to NY so they can meet. Wei-wei, working as a waiter, catches Wai on the date and threatens to tell Simon. Through this, Mao Mae confesses that she also has a white boyfriend that she doesn’t want to tell her family about.
When Simon hears about Wei-wei’s luck and inability to get a green card, he gets the idea that Wai-Tung should marry Wei-wei to help both of them out. The film follows the antics as the farce progresses. Will Wai come out to his family? Will Wai fulfill his father’s wish to hold his grandchild before he dies?
The film is the second in a trilogy of films Ang Lee made, informally titled “Father Knows Best,” which explores the contrast of traditional Chinese family values and Western individualism. Here, Wai-Tung performs a traditional arrangement with Wei-wei, afraid to disappoint his parents by revealing his gay partner and thus his inability to fulfill that expected role. The younger generation may not remember or know the extent of gay ostracism in both the East and the West. In the US, gay men could not marry, let alone adopt, so Wai-Tung cannot satisfy both worlds.
The film’s sense of humor gives the feeling that the jokes come from real places. The film never shows the obvious visual cues of a comedy on when to laugh, letting the humor come through organically. This subtle leaning also means that the film never makes jokes at the expense of its gay characters. No one is a stereotype beyond the plot contrivance itself.
Unlike most romcoms, this movie doesn’t take melodramatic turns to create stakes — each moment feels like it has a touch of specificity. For example, I spotted them pulling Poison off the VHS shelf to hide that they’re gay. That feels like a deep cut for general audiences, but I’m not sure if they saw this movie when it came out. Still, because it feels real, it got a laugh from me.
I love the look of the film! The 35mm film gives everything a warmth. The lighting is thoughtful but subtle, opting out of the romcom perspective of shimmering flatness in favor of real-world groundedness.
Nothing dates this movie more than Simon buying Wai a cellular phone as a birthday present. The thing looks like a walkie-talkie.
From the premise, I was apprehensive about yet another gay panic farce. But the filmmaking and characters contain so much warmth and humor that I found myself charmed and emotionally invested throughout.
I’m so apprehensive about the new remake…