Au revoir Taipei

Audiences at a handful of international film fests in 2010 (from Berlin to SFO) gave it their top awards, with good reason: Au Revoir Taipei is a charming adolescent rom-com. It's a happy little lightweight cinematic souffle, a tasty entertainment from Arvin Chen, a first-time writer-director whom Wim Wenders co-executive-produced (perhaps explaining why experienced Caucasians are credited with the cinematography and editing).

As so often with Chinese debut features, there's an over-reliance on the Wong Kar-wai "look" - doorways painted red, green lighting and purple lips, rain-soaked back lanes and sloppy cafes, neon lights and strange angles. Pretty to look at and far from menacing in Chen's quirky tale of oddball, goofy Taipei kids during one night of slapsticky gangland antics.

At times, the cuteness and the characters' comic non-viciousness are cloying, especially when the French motif is overstated in the soundtrack of pretend-Parisienne cafe violin music and jazz. The movie's starting point is the dream of slim young graduate Kai (Jack Yao) to follow his girlfriend to Paris. He doesn't act or look old enough to have graduated, he works in his parents' noodle cafe, and he sits on a bookstore's floor teaching himself French. He's mildly cute, while the bookshelf stockist Susie (Amber Kuo) is really cute and a delight to watch.

The supporting cast do wonders with characters who are simple-minded or foolish oddities: shy convenience store clerks, an orange-uniformed gang of ugly young real-estate touts, plain-clothes policemen with girlfriend and obesity hassles, bumbling middle-aged gangsters and a fey and lanky gangster wannabee whose hair-style and moues suggest a Taiwan Peewee Herman.

The moral of the crime caper is predictable: who needs to go to Paris when Taipei's own nightlife, street markets, gourmet snacks and transportation systems are so convenient and friendly? Naturally, Taipei's tourism authorities helped to fund the movie. They got good value if they were intending to appeal to unsophisticated Asian teenagers. Candy is cute, even if it's not very nourishing.

This Taipei is a far cry from stilted old black-and-white Chinese melodramas and crime flicks, clips from which are viewed critically and scornfully, yet lovingly, on late-night TV by various characters throughout the movie. Another cuteness possibly added primarily for its own sake, for the writer-director's amusement. Luckily, many audiences will share the joke.