Flashback: Taipei Story (1985) – urban alienation in Taiwanese auteur Edward Yang’s second feature
Yang had lived abroad and knew something about cultural dislocation and the stress that comes when traditional values clash with modernity, ideas that found expression in his seminal movie
Edward Yang’s 1985 Taipei Story is an important film in the movement known as Taiwan New Cinema, which sought to define Taiwanese identity by reference to its history, society and culture.
The film is set in the island’s capital during the 1980s and depicts different generations and social classes, all trying to come to terms with, and take advantage of, Taiwan’s modernisation and Westernisation. Yang’s second full-length feature, following the equally adventurous women’s story That Day, on the Beach (1983), was praised at international film festivals, and introduced Yang, and the New Cinema movement, to audiences around the world.
The story is complex but not complicated, drawing disparate characters and Taipei locales into its web. The main character is Ah Lung (played by fellow director Hou Hsiao-hsien, who co-wrote the script and mortgaged his house to fund the film); he’s a former professional baseball player who now runs a textile business.
Ah Lung isn’t comfortable with the changes taking place in Taipei, but his girlfriend (singer Tsai Chin, Yang’s then-wife), an independent career woman, has embraced the opportunities they bring. Her hopes, though, are frustrated by her father, who has amassed debts and needs to borrow money, and by her sister, who has dropped out of society. As the film progresses, the characters become morally and emotionally lost, and begin to drift.
