''Taipei Story'' is a 1985 Taiwanese film directed, scored, and co-written by
Edward Yang
Edward Yang (; November 6, 1947 – June 29, 2007) was a Taiwanese filmmaker. Yang, along with fellow auteurs Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang, was one of the leading film-makers of the Taiwanese New Wave and Taiwanese cinema. He won the Be ...
— his second full-length feature film and third overall. The film stars Yang's fellow filmmaker
Hou Hsiao-hsien and singer
Tsai Chin, whom Yang subsequently married. It is one of the earliest films of the
New Taiwanese Cinema
The cinema of Taiwan ( zh, t=臺灣電影 or ) is deeply rooted in the island's unique history. Since its introduction to Taiwan in 1901 under Japanese rule, cinema has developed in Taiwan under ROC rule through several distinct stages. It has ...
.
In the United States,
Janus Films
Janus Films is an American film distribution company. The distributor is credited with introducing numerous films, now considered masterpieces of world cinema, to American audiences, including the films of Michelangelo Antonioni, Sergei Eisenstein ...
gave a limited release of the film's 4K restoration, done by the
World Cinema Project, on March 17, 2017.
Title
The original title, "green plums and a bamboo horse", refers to
Chinese plums and the childhood practice of riding a bamboo stick as a pretend horse. This
idiom
An idiom is a phrase or expression that typically presents a figurative, non-literal meaning attached to the phrase; but some phrases become figurative idioms while retaining the literal meaning of the phrase. Categorized as formulaic language, ...
alludes to an 8th-century poem by
Li Bai, and in China it refers to a
childhood sweetheart.
Plot
A young woman (
Tsai Chin) urgently seeks to navigate the maze of contemporary
Taipei, and find a future. She hopes that her boyfriend Lung (
Hou Hsiao-hsien) is the key to the future, but Lung is stuck in a past that combines baseball and traditional loyalty that leads him to squander his nest egg bailing her father out of financial trouble.
Characters
*
Tsai Chin - Chin, an office worker
*
Hou Hsiao-hsien - Lung, a former baseball player
*
Wu Nien-jen
Wu Nien-jen (; born ; 5 August 1952) is a Taiwanese screenwriter, Film director, director, and writer. He is one of the most prolific and highly regarded scriptwriters in Taiwan and a leading member of the New Taiwanese Cinema, although he has als ...
- Ch'en, a taxi driver and former baseball player
*
Lin Hsiu-ling
Lin or LIN may refer to:
People
*Lin (surname) (normally ), a Chinese surname
*Lin (surname) (normally 蔺), a Chinese surname
* Lin (''The King of Fighters''), Chinese assassin character
*Lin Chow Bang, character in Fat Pizza
Places
*Lin, Iran, ...
- Ling
*
Ke Su-yun - Gwan
*
Ko I-chen
A KO is a knockout in various sports, such as boxing and martial arts.
K.O., Ko or Kō may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* KO (musician), Canadian musician who plays a fusion of hip hop and folk music
* ''K.O.'' (album), a 2021 ...
- Mr. Ke, an architect
*
Mei Fang - Chin's mother
*
Wu Ping-nan
Wu may refer to:
States and regions on modern China's territory
*Wu (state) (; och, *, italic=yes, links=no), a kingdom during the Spring and Autumn Period 771–476 BCE
** Suzhou or Wu (), its eponymous capital
** Wu County (), a former county i ...
- Chin's father
*
Yang Li-yin
Yang may refer to:
* Yang, in yin and yang, one half of the two symbolic polarities in Chinese philosophy
* Korean yang, former unit of currency of Korea from 1892 to 1902
* YANG, a data modeling language for the NETCONF network configuration pr ...
- Ch'en's wife
*
Chen Shu-fang
Chen Shu-fang (; born July 2, 1939) is a Taiwanese actress. She made her film debut in 1957 and television debut in 1971. In 2020, she was the recipient of the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress at the 57th Golden Horse Awards.
Early lif ...
- Mrs. Mei
*
Lai Te-nan
Lai or LAI may refer to:
Abbreviations
* Austrian Latin America Institute (Österreichisches Lateinamerika-Institut)
* ''Latin American Idol'', TV series
* La Trobe Institute, Melbourne, Australia
* Leaf area index, leaf area of a crop or ve ...
- a coach
Themes
According to the Doc Film Society, the film "displays Yang's uncompromising critique of the middle-class with its dissection of its heroine's emotional fragility, vainly disguised behind the sunglasses she sports day and night. As she flees the past, her boyfriend idealistically clings to it, a Confucian rigidity toward which Yang bears still less patience."
References
External links
*
*
*
''Taipei Story: Modern Planning''an essay by Andrew Chan at the
Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...
Taiwanese drama films
1985 films
1980s Mandarin-language films
Films directed by Edward Yang
Films with screenplays by Chu T’ien-wen
Films set in Taipei
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