Au Revoir Taipei

A love story takes place over the course of one evening in Taipai.

Review Guy Lodge, Edinburgh Festival 2010:
Eagle-eyed readers may note that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen and discussed Chinese-American filmmaker Arvin Chen’s sweetly immaculate petit four of a debut feature: I first encountered it at Berlin in February. While I was suitably enchanted by its beguiling young cast and iridescent visuals, however, I was slightly hindered by the fact that I’d accidentally walked into a German-subtitled screening of a Mandarin-Taiwanese-language film; as much as I liked what I saw, its spry wit and narrative zip largely passed me by.

Four months and one English-subtitled screening later, this one-night romantic caper emerges as both the best debut feature and date movie of 2010 thus far, the kind of knowingly feather-light entertainment that Hollywood struggles to produce these days without resorting to twee clever-cleverisms.

The story is a trifle: desperate for money to travel to Paris in search of his ex, lovelorn restaurant worker Kai (Jack Yao) accepts a delivery job for a local mobster, attracting the attention of competing gangsters and shy bookstore worker Susie (Amber Kuo) along the way. Still, even as the silly MacGuffins and mistaken identities mount up, Chen and his appealing ensemble play it pleasingly straight, teasing out subtle relationship details amid the hijinks. (Best in show honors must go to Lawrence Ko, hilariously deadpan as an overly polite aspiring crime lord.)

Chen wears his influences, Eastern and Western, casually and openly on his sleeve: some Wong here, some Godard there, notably in a beautifully staged outdoor dance sequence. Perhaps most of all, his apprenticeship to the late Edward Yang shows up in the camera’s patient, rich-hued exploration of the titular city and a wry concern with everyday behavioural detail – this is a film where gangsters put a heist on hold to go in search of late-night noodles. A A bijou pleasure, to be sure, but a beguiling arrival from a major new talent, and a crossover hit waiting to happen.