Recent movies

[halfcactus]

海角七號 Cape No. 7 (2008)
Suggested this as a groupwatch because I'd just come from the Taiwan Pop Music Exhibit (highly recommend, would go again if I had the means + time) which instilled in me such a longing for film and music... And groupwatch is always an excuse to go through my movie to-watch (or to-rewatch) list. :P

Cape No. 7 was a massive domestic hit that came out a year after Jay Chou's Secret and outsold it... And I can see why.

PLOT: Former rock musician Aga leaves Taipei and moves back to Hengchun. He gets hired as a postman through the strings pulled by his estranged stepfather, who works for the local government—and through the same strings, he is tasked to perform as the opening act of a famous Japanese singer's beach concert.

Aga, who has a lot of authority, emotional, and personality issues, in a characteristically unprofessional move, opens the mail. Among it, he finds seven sixty-year-old love letters written in Japanese addressed to a certain Tomoko in Cape No. 7, which is now no longer to be found.

By day, the mystery of these letters slowly unravels, and by night, a band is assembled for rehearsals, comprised of a ten-year-old church pianist, an eighty-year-old yueqin player, an indigenous Taiwanese policeman who was jilted by his wife, a sad drummer who longs for a married woman, a Hakka Malasun salesman, and Aga himself, so... yay representation! Both the story and the movie are all about promoting and supporting local, and most of it is in Taiwanese, so I think it speaks a lot to the domestic audience. Overseas, the language aspects might not be as clear, apart from present-day Tomoko's brief outburst as the outsider who could only communicate in Mandarin or Japanese.

I thought it was an okay movie... I sought music and I got music, culminating in three musical numbers at the end. It has a low-stakes atmosphere that focused on the lives of ordinary people in a small town, which I like. But the protagonists themselves AND the romantic storyline are hard to connect to—in part because I don't really understand Aga or Tomoko's motivations, but also because the most natural ending for me would have been for their relationship to be a beautiful summer fling—one that represented a turning point in their lives, rather than this sort of, idk, past lives reparation.

That said, I'm not the target audience for this movie and I tend to be cynical of indigenous rep... I'm also disconcerted, though unsurprised, over TW pop culture's goodwill for imperial Japan... but I should stop complaining because I have great fondness for an actor who is a product of TW and JP relations. XD I still got emotional closure at the end of it, though! So I'd give it a 3/5.

How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies (2024)

Sons inherit assets. Daughter inherit cancer.

Huge Thai movie that came out just this year, starring Bilkin as an unscrupulous grandson vying for a slice of his ailing grandmother's inheritance. (The English title is quite misleading.)

It's emotionally driven and M(Bilkin)'s character arc is mainly there to depict the grief of his grandmother, who has lost all familial support from the generations that came before and after her... and I suppose to critique, to some extent, son-first upbringings. The parts where it touches on daughters doing all the caregiving while entitled sons reaped all the favor and rewards felt pointed and realistic, though this was not fully addressed due to the main character being the grandson. (There is an interesting granddaughter character, M's cousin Mui, who is similarly pragmatic and sweet, but she appears only briefly.)

Overall I loved the slice-of-life depictions of a Chinese-Thai family (with the language being lost on M's generation), and I enjoyed M as a selfish but sweet grandson who undergoes character development. But the concluding family-friendly messaging is not for me and my cynical heart, even when I could follow it emotionally. I still cried at the right places, and skipped over the scenes that would have been too hard for me (mainly cancer and elderly care bits), so there's that!

Definite CWs for: death of the elderly, terminal illness / cancer, family inheritance drama that i found had realistic (though low-key) tropes...

Would give this a 3.5/5.

Comments

[lessonsinescapology]

That movie got a lot of criticism from female viewers because if the main character was a granddaughter then it would have been very different. From my own experience I concur.

[halfcactus]

Ohhhh interesting! That's usually my stance for most media, but I'm glad to hear that this is a common sentiment for this particular movie... Sad that it's something that rings true for you, though.

Tbh I think that the ending is a cop-out because even after everything, the only thing that MC's mother gets is some lip service from the grandmother.. But I don't think the movie was ever going to present the grandmother as flawed and complicit in perpetuating a misogynistic family system that yields spoiled sons and unvalued daughters, which is what I would have personally preferred haha.

[lessonsinescapology]

LOL! Pretty much every Thai woman/daughter would have preferred that ending.

Because it's mothers and grandmothers who spoil their sons rotten and then regret it decades later.

[halfcactus]

Because it's mothers and grandmothers who spoil their sons rotten and then regret it decades later.
Yeah this is exactly the plot of the movie, except we're all in grandma's feelings. ^^;

Me being an outsider really helped a lot, since I'm able to be fascinated at our points of similarity and differences... That, and I'm (luckily) the daughter of one my grandma's sons, so all of the baggage and generational trauma landed on my grandma, aunt, and cousins. (And in my case it's a specifically traditional Chinese thing. The misogyny in my Filipino side is different.)

I'm so happy to hear there's pushback in the domestic audience though! Across the sea, I only know this as a massive tearjerker of a movie about family drama and losing your grandparents.

[lessonsinescapology]

LOL! It did well at the box office here as it played on emotions and melodrama. But there was some criticism that it was just perpetuating old stereotypes and didn't really give a fair treatment to the women.

My family is Thai-Chinese so this movie wasn't anything I hadn't seen in RL^^

[halfcactus]

Oh it played with the emotions and melodrama hard. And since this is one of the few Thai movies I've seen, I wasn't Tired of the tropes yet. ^^; Thank you so much for sharing what it's like on your side! I hope they produce better quality works that are actually watchable for you in the future. :P

[nnozomi]

Thank you for the interesting writeups, especially Cape No. 7. I'm not much of a movie watcher but I might watch this one (if I had the chance) for the band rehearsals and the language stuff!
I'm also disconcerted, though unsurprised, over TW pop culture's goodwill for imperial Japan... Very weird. I know there was a movie a few years back based on the colonial-era Taiwanese baseball team that competed in the Japanese national tournament with Japanese, Chinese-Taiwanese, and indigenous players, a historical thing that interests me a lot, but I have no idea how they handled it...

[halfcactus]

Do you know the title of that movie? That kind of thing does also interest me (+ if it has sports tropes, I'm usually down for it). XD

Cape No. 7 (along with Zhu Yilong's movies that have Stars in their title) is on Netflix in some parts of Asia! And if not, they should be on Dramacool/Dramanice.

The language stuff is really interesting! Since it's a mix of Mandarin, Taiwanese, and Japanese... And the Amis word Malasun. XD It's just that I didn't have my earphones when I was watching, and not being able to hear the dialogue clearly really impacted my enjoyment. ;A;

I'm interested in hearing what Taiwanese/Hokkien sounds to you since you know JP and some JP words are more similar to that rather than Mandarin.

[nnozomi]

Thank you for the movie info! I'll see what I can find.
I have to say the one time I visited Taiwan I found Taiwanese Mandarin very hard to understand, but that's mostly my own terrible listening skills. I do have a friend who speaks Taiwanese, will see what she has to say.

The baseball movie (forgot the title and had to look it up!) is called KANO, this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kano_(film) I haven't actually watched it, very curious to see what you think if you do!

[halfcactus]

Lol I don't think it's purely your listening skill, there really are differences, in pronunciation, accent + tones, and vocabulary... I think I still struggle a lot with dramas. But I feel modern-day Taiwan is also chill enough and happy enough to adjust to tourists/English speakers so the experience is less harrowing when you're actually there.

Ty also for the movie info! I looked it up and it looks like the director is indigenous on his father's side, while one of the co-producers is the director of Cape No.7... It's also more recent than I thought! (Laughing because 2014 is still recent in my brain.)