Fang Lang
Taiwan / China,
1997, 118 min
Shown in 1998
CREDITS
- dir
-
Lin Cheng-sheng
- prod
-
Hsu Li-kong
- scr
-
Lin Cheng-sheng
- cam
-
Tsai Cheng-hui
- editor
-
Chen Po-wen
- cast
-
Chen Shiang-chyi, Lee Kang-sheng, Chen Shih-huang, Chang Pen-yu
- source
-
Zoom Hunt International Productions Co., Ltd.
-
COMMENTS
Late addition not listed in program guide.
OTHER
With a singular voice that distinguishes him from his New Taiwan Cinema contemporaries, Lin Cheng-sheng adds to his brief, but already remarkable, filmography with Sweet Degeneration, his third film in two years. As with A Drifting Life (SFIFF 1997) and Murmur of Youth (SFIFF 1998), Lin’s new film delicately unfolds, gradually building to a climax of stunning emotional reverberations. Drawn from a particularly painful episode in the director’s past, Sweet Degeneration delves into the uneasy bonds a brother and sister have with each other and the people around them. Upon his return home from his mandatory military service, Chun-shen steals money from his embittered father and sets out for Taipei with half-hearted hopes of finding a job playing the sax. Instead of pursuing his music career, the perpetually apathetic Chun-shen finds it easier to squander his money on cheap hotel rooms and prostitutes. Meanwhile, back home, his sister Ju-feng, who is going through a painful separation from her husband, pines for her brother. She is determined to bring him back into the family fold, whether he wants to come or not. Lee Kang-sheng—star of The River and A Drifting Life (both SFIFF 1997) and Chen Shiang-chyi—last seen in The River (SFIFF 1997)—give finely nuanced performances as the two siblings leading lives of quiet desperation.
FACTOID #88
Steve Cochran, the American actor who starred in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1957 SFIFF entry Il Grido, demanded a private screening of the film before it could be shown to Festival audiences so he could ensure that scenes that had been censored in Italy had not been cut from the print. Cochran, who had American distribution rights to the film, got a screening’delaying the film’s 8:30 start time for ticketholders.
