Taipei exchanges

The Mandarin title for Taipei Exchanges (Di 36 Ge Gu Shi) provides a better clue to the quilted nature of the 82-minute Taiwanese indie. In a chic but cluttered coffee bar, 35 bars of soap from cities around the world have tales to be told or exchanged; the final tale has not yet happened. The soaps are just some of the pretty props set in an artfully crafted little movie about young women's dreams and realities. Their "Daughter's Cafe" belongs to Doris (played by very busy and successful Lun-Mai Ocean Heaven/Parking/Stool Pigeon Kwai), her equally-angular sister is Josie (newcomer Zai-Zai Lin); both are charming, perky company, just like good coffees should be.

The offbeat, almost flaky, 2010 feature is writer-director Ya-chuan Hsiao's second; the first was Mirror Image (Ming Dai Zhui Zhu), a decade before, which collected several awards. It spun a similarly light (and even shorter) scenario about bizarre retail experiences, focused on a pawnshop where a young man and his girlfriend collect palm prints and vend unwanted pawned items. In the latest variation, one of the sisters is a business graduate who develops the attention-grabbing idea of getting customers to exchange unwanted collectibles or provide services (from singing to unclogging drains). The girls squabble, dream, get nagged by their divorced mother (in cute but repetitively themed settings), are attracted by the man and his soap bars, attract tourist groups, and prepare the daily cake specials.

It's no surprise to learn see that the real Taipei Tourism Board helped sponsor the movie, which shows the city in well-lit enticing light moods. The movie presumably gained much from its lead executive producer, multi-award-winner (including Cannes, Golden Horses and Venice top prizes) veteran director Hsiao-hsien (Flowers of Shanghai, Millennium Mambo, Three Times) Hou. The movie's slow-paced, but his usual tedious stylishness isn't overbearingly present.

Although it's a cinematographic delight, and is blessed with some delightful light jazz soundtrack music, and has been edited with panache (and cute mocumentary street interviews with Taipei residents), and is borne airily along by the actors, Taipei Exchanges is just a cute and pretty bauble, as substantial as a perfectly-cooked souffle.