By Brian Hu
Like a dream half-forgotten, Chen Wen-tang's "Blue Cha Cha" was one of VC FilmFest 2006's more fleeting, sensuous delights. Brian Hu explains why.
In 2003, I saw Cheng Wen-tang's debut feature, the magisterial Somewhere over the Dreamland, at the Asian Film Festival in San Francisco's 4 Star Theatre. Floored by the film's poetic treatment of lost love, I knew I had just viewed one of the best Taiwanese films in recent years.
Fast forward to 2006. I still haven't re-watched the film, as I can't find it on VCD or DVD, in Taiwan or elsewhere. I've forgotten just about all of the film's plot, as well as any specific reasons why it moved me so. Today, my admiration of the film is maintained by vague images I've retained from that lone screening in San Francisco: a missing wallet, a construction site, a glistening lake, a carousel in slow motion, an angel. I do remember that the main character, a Taiwanese aborigine, travels to Taipei in search for the photo of a long-lost lover. In regards to the film, I feel much the same way today: holding on to those half-formed images, so as to not let a work of such emotional resonance escape from my memory.
This insomnia seems specific to the world of festivalgoing. Films like Somewhere over the Dreamland have little arthouse or home video appeal in places like the United States. (From the Venice Film Festival, Variety warned potential distributors: "Some viewers may find the lack of resolution to this rather mysterious story a turnoff.") This predicament is exacerbated by Taiwan's own conservative and self-critical marketplace, where few local films -- even by masters like Edward Yang -- ever make it to the shelves of regular DVD stores. Somewhere over the Dreamland's Taiwan appearances have been limited to public television and art houses like Taipei's Spot, meaning the film will inevitably evaporate from the memories of locals just as it has gradually faded from mine. The situation is different from Hollywood films, where one viewing can last a lifetime; the difference is that most art films lack those history-writing institutions employed by powerful studios to keep their films in the public memory (and thus on DVD shelves and TV schedules): AFI top 100 lists, Oscar-cast "best-of" reels, coffee table books, movie memorabilia, actor biographies. So writing this review of Cheng Wen-tang's latest film, Blue Cha Cha, has special importance because it ensures that while I may never see the film again, I can freeze in time my initial responses.
The setting was the Laemmle Sunset Theatre in West Hollywood; the event was the VC Film Festival. Only a small handful of patrons arrive for the screening, but that's expected for a small Asian film by a director whose previous films are unavailable anywhere.
Blue Cha Cha opens with the release of a young woman named An-an from prison. It takes a while for us to realize where we are or where she's going, as the narrative unfolds in images rather than expository dialogue. We're not immediately told how long she was locked up and we're certainly not told her crime. She arrives at the makeshift home of a hung-over old friend Ah Yu who lives in the shore-side city of Kaohsiung. As are most narrative details in the film, the nature of their prior relationship is largely hidden from us, but we do detect in Ah Yu's motherly attention and An-an's child-like attachment a complementary relationship that substitutes for familial bond. Ah Yu gets An-an a job as a hostess at her neighborhood bar, and they keep tabs on each other via cell phone.
Cheng shows his sincerity about the characters' desires by very sneakily hiding from us that An-an is mentally stunned. By only revealing the concrete and visual (rather than the diagnostic or medical) details of her life -- pills, slow movements, facial expressions -- the audience learns to sympathize with An-an as a person rather than a patient, and her depiction comes off as anything but exploitative or stereotyped. More important than the root of her condition (which is the Freudian obsession of most mainstream films) are the ways An-an very gradually learns to cope with employment and romance after her release from jail. Ah Yu too is depicted as less a saint-like guardian than a loud, stubborn lady with an inclination for liquor and dance.
The film observes as An-an wades through two traumatic relationships, one with a rich and probably corrupt patron of Ah Yu's bar, and the other with a young manager at the electronics factory she ends up working at. If the film seems at all directionless during these sequences, it's to reflect An-an's own uncertainties about her future. Through the deliberate pacing, the film refuses to surpass An-an's own sense of speed; to drive the plot any faster would be to betray her gradual emotional re-awakening.
In addition to the slow pacing and narrative translucency, Blue Cha Cha also frustrates certain expectations through deliberate blankness. This is literalized by the frequent shots of the ocean or other locations to create contemplative spaces between the narration. More important though is the lack of expression on An-an's face. Played by pop singer Tarcy Su, An-an responds to little and reveals less. Except for a shouting fit or two, An-an can barely muster a scream or smile, to the frustration of her second boyfriend. This is part of Cheng's strategy of hiding her sickness from the audience, as well as a way for us to think more closely about emotional confrontation in the absence of dialogue or conventional communication.
These descriptions risk making the film appear laborious and dreary; it's not. By hiding obvious emotions from the audience, Blue Cha Cha observes An-an's slow process of readjustment. However, the film doesn't hide from the audience those brief but important moments of bliss that remind her of the happier life before prison and the one to come. These moments are initiated by the no-nonsense but impassioned Ah Yu, played to perfection by Lu Yi-ching in her first feature film outside of Tsai Ming-liang's universe. Scenes of the two of them dancing on a roof or screaming to the ocean would be overly sentimental in most films, but are welcome here because they're not too neatly integrated into the narrative and because of their seemingly improvisational qualities. In these scenes, the camera becomes mobile and the solemnity of their expressions withers until we think we see An-an actually crack a smile. What's impressive is that these scenes don't simplify their relationship into obvious mother-daughter or friend-friend categories, but in fact make the nature of their complementarity more ambiguous, undefined, and therefore compelling. They make us wonder about the intimacy of the duo's earlier relationship, and the scenes' ambiguous sense of fleetingness turns these rare moments of joy into transitional moments in their lives rather than cheesy symbols of unconditional love or friendship.
Tonally, the film's ending captures that sense of transition rather than completion. The music is an upbeat and cheerful cha-cha rather than a melodramatic uproar of strings, and the light comedy provided by Ah Yu tells An-an that she's got her back but that she won't hesitate to be the straight-shooting near-drunk older woman who'll literally toss her -- and her things -- out into the streets if An-an starts acting up. The presence of a traveling puppet troupe in the film's final moments hints at the cathartic magical realism common to much of the post-new wave Taiwanese cinema. And we finally find out why An-an was in prison, but Cheng is smart enough to realize that the reason can't be revealed in a grand moment of post-traumatic soul-baring, but instead in jarring strokes of comic surprise. An-an's crime comes out as an afterthought rather than as an explanation for her mental condition, because by that point in the film, An-an has already realigned her life and any attempt by the film to further diagnose her situation would be petty and inconsistent with the film's general tendency toward psychological ambiguity and narrative openness.
Based on what I remember about Somewhere over the Dreamland, I'd say that Blue Cha Cha is considerably more mainstream than Cheng's debut. (I haven't seen his second film, 2004's The Passage.) For one, Blue Cha Cha actually has recognizable Taiwanese stars, including Leon Dai, in addition to Su and Lu. It's also got a steadier rhythmic beat driven by peppy music and scattered humor. And while it doesn't reach the former film's range of emotions nor its sensitive racial commentary, Blue Cha Cha is both a compelling examination of a woman adjusting to society and a satisfying time at the movies. Which may be just enough for the film to do what the former couldn't: get a DVD release and live on in more than just the memories of us lucky festivalgoers.
Published: Thursday, May 25, 2006