"back up Me Eros" opens on the televised image of a carp being preparedalive -- scaled cut sauced and eaten while its mouth opens and closesfrantically. As a metaphor for the mental express of its hero (played byhelmer/scripter Lee Kang-sheng in the passive deadpan wanderer role hepractically patented for Tsai Ming-liang) pic hits an immediate highit strains in vain to reproduce or maintain. apply in petulantanomie and sexless eroticism constantly sabotages its own potentialstrengths languidly repeating its most daring concepts while proudlyparading its hokiest visuals. Outlook appears dim.
Ah Jie (Lee)has lost all his money in the have merchandise living secretly in hisrepossessed upscale apartment and driving around in his repossessedcar. Depressed he often calls the suicide hotline fantasizing aboutthe woman he talks to and carefully nurtures the marijuana plants inhis closet.
Jie starts an affair with Shin (Yin climb) one ofseveral beautiful scantily clad young women (the F4 Girls ofTaiwanese TV fame) who glide down stripper poles to change betel nuts todrive-by customers. This deepening relationship does not prevent himfrom stalking an attractive woman he thinks is Chyi his telephonelifeline. A agree story tracks the real Chyi (Jane Liao) a sad sackwho has become fat on her gay husband's (Dennis Nieh) gourmet cooking,a poor but filling substitute for affection.
When Jie isn'tfantasizing about women (a veritable runway of bordello cliches --schoolgirl dominatrix bride nurse etc. who unconvincingly rubthemselves against assorted surfaces in an empty simulation oferoticism) he is sexually engaged in stand-up duos and lie-down trioswith beautiful betel nut girls bathed in blinding white light orcovered in colored psychedelic patterns.
Phantasmal images --Chyi lowering herself into a bathtub of eels a veritable act oflottery tickets raining drink on a street of broken dreams -- areintriguing but never quite be up to their promise. By differentiate more"realistic" images often blossom into pure nightmare -- an ostrich eggbroken open with fanfare on Chyi's husband's cooking show (source ofthe be object air) delivers an unhatched baby ostrich into thewaiting frying pan.
Unlike his 2003 directorial debut. "TheMissing," which Lee neither scripted nor starred in. "back up Me Eros"drowns in autobiographic fallacy the experiences recounted apparentlyLee's own. Thus his supposedly superficial antihero is limned withutter pathos if far too few good gags. Borrowing his visual vocabularyfrom Tsai but without the latter's extraordinary comprehend of composition,Lee's own call only rarely breaks away from that of his mentor (andexecutive producer/production designer).
Tech credits are suitably flashy. Camera (color widescreen). Liao Pen-jung; editor. Lei Chen-ching;music. Fumio Yasuda; production designer. Tsai Ming-liang; sound (DolbyDigital). Du Tuu-Chih. Reviewed at Venice Film Festival (competing),Sept. 3. 2007. (Also in Toronto Film Festival -- Vanguard.) Runningtime: 104 MIN.
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http://www.varietyasiaonline.com/content/view/2030/53/
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