Director: Lee Kang-sheng Year: 2008 Rating: 6.5 Country:
Taiwan
In his introduction to the film, director Lee Kang-shen spoke of Beetle Nut
Girls – a phenomenon that had until now escaped me. Apparently, in Taiwan
there are these small stands dotted along the highways of the country in
order to serve caffeinated delights to truckers on long hauls. These are
all manned so to speak by women who due to fierce competition have over time
become lovelier and began wearing less and less clothes. At least in the
film, they often wear provocative outfits that play to men’s sexual fantasies
such as that of a nurse or schoolgirl. Their entrance only enhances this
image – a slide down a stripper’s pole and a cleavage display as they stick
their head into the vehicle. So who wants to go on a road trip next summer
with me?
Lee Kang-sheng is best known to art movie goers as the main actor in many
of Tsai Ming-liang’s films and Tsai’s cinematic influence seems very apparent
in this work. If one were to watch lots of the art films coming out of Taiwan,
one would have to wonder if the entire country was in a state of deep funk.
The films often ache with ennui, listlessness and unstated sorrow. This film
certainly falls into this genre though there is a sly tongue in cheek humor
constantly at play that makes it quite palatable and makes one wonder if
Lee is almost poking fun at this type of film. The screen is awash in startling
imagery that often delights, but it never quite adds up to much other than
a visual feast. If Lee is trying to make some point here about the human
condition, I confess to missing it. His mentor Tsai uses many of the same
tools in his films, but they always leave you pondering life when you leave
the theater. Honestly, I left mainly thinking about Beetle Nut Girls.
The film begins with some graphic imagery of a fish being sliced into pieces
from tail to head but leaving the fish alive as its mouth and eyes move in
spasmodic helpless motions. As the film progresses you realize that this
is a symbol for the main character, Ah Jie (Lee Kang-sheng) whose soul is
dead but he keeps going through the motions of being alive. Once quite wealthy,
Ah Jie has lost all his money in the stock market, but still lives in his
spacious repossessed apartment. Here he grows marijuana that he takes liberally
on a daily basis. The apartment is above a few Beetlenut stands and he gets
to know a few of the women – having an affair with one and a threesome with
two others. Not even this though is able to shake him out of his complete
surrender to life. A side story follows a large woman who works at a suicide
phone center that Ah Jie often calls. Her life isn’t much better as she is
married to a chef whose cooking has made her heavy and who doesn’t bother
to hide his affair with a young male stud. She buys a tubful of eels that
she finally crawls into and pleasures herself with. Everything here is shot
with an artistic eye that satisfies on one level but seems near masturbation
on another – the sex is strenuous, gorgeous and acrobatic shot in cool light,
the design of the apartment is out of a magazine, the ladies out of a naughty
Vogue layout – but it’s hard to see what the point of the film is other than
giving us a visual buzz – but that it does in spades.
