Synopsis

A delinquent Eurasian girl, Shu-an, is kept under lock and key in her room by her mother. To break the monotony of her "incarceration", she makes prank calls on the telephone. Purely by coincidence, the number she calls belongs to that of the authoress Chou Yu-fen.

The prank call arouses Chou's inspiration to create but it also leads her to question the condition of her seven year-old marriages. Ever since she resigned from her job, Chou has been a housewife. The boredom of being a housewife causes her to write. Her husband, Li Li-chung is a conscientious laboratory technician in a hospital. He yearns for a promotion and when a high-level position falls vacant, he resorts to ruthless means to discredit his rival in order to win the post.

Chou Yu-fen decides to move out of her apartment to live alone, ostensibly to avoid prank calls but really to develop an affair with an ex-colleague; she resolves to separate from her husband. Meanwhile, Shu-an has escaped from home and links up with a young boy interested in photography. The relationship is cursory; Shu-an returns to the fold of her ex-boyfriend who has just been released from prison. Both of them set out to swindle easy victims in a sex seam.

Chou wins a literary prize for her novel but her relationship with her husband worsens. Li consults with his childhood friend, a police inspector, about the prank calls - which he believes is the cause of his marriage breaking up. But the policeman is unable to do anything. Li also suspects that his wife is having an affair. Dejected at the turn of events (he has also lost his chances for promotion), Li steals his friend's gun and goes on a killing spree. The violence that subsequently occurs may be real but it may also be a figment of Chou's literary imagination.

Film Festivals & Awards

Best Picture The Golden Horse Awards 1986 London Film Festival 1987 Best Screenplay Asian Pacific Film Festival 0

Silver Leopard Locarno Intl. Film Festival 0

1987 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 0
0 0 1988
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0 0 0
0 1989 0

Director Bio

Born in Shanghai, 1947, Yang moved to Taipei with his family in 1949. He distinguished himself as a cartoonist and manga artist while still in his teens. After graduating with a B.S. degree in electrical engineering, he moved to the USA to study computer design and took a higher degree in Computer and Information Sciences. His interest in film led him to enroll at USC film school, but he dropped out after only one semester and worked as a microcomputer and systems designer at a research institute in Seattle for seven years. He returned to Taiwan in 1981 to begin a new career as a filmmaker - initially as a scriptwriter, then as a director.

In 1989 he founded the independent company Yang & His Gang, Filmmakers and made A Bright Summer Day. The company expanded its activities to include theater work in 1992, and was renamed Atom Films & Theater. In addition to financing and producing films and plays, the company is increasingly involved in hi-tech multi-media experiments and applications.

Cast & Crew

Technical Info