Summary
It’s a melodramatic and gloriously pulpy drama, taken to new levels of abstraction with its mixture of otherworldly narrators and emotional gut punches.
From the title, it would be fair to assume that you’re getting into a salacious bit of melodrama encompassing a rich family of socialites. If so, you would be entirely correct. The crime drama from Taiwanese director Yang Ya-che – best known for Girlfriend, Boyfriend – is like an entire season of a soap compressed into a single film. Yet few soaps have had as much fun with the form as this.
THE BOLD, THE CORRUPT, AND THE BEAUTIFUL (血觀音) follows family matriarch Mrs. Tang (Kara Wai), whose real estate dealings with corrupt officials have earned her a fierce reputation. Her two daughters, the innocent young Chen-Chen (Vicky Chen) and the rebellious Ning (Wu Ke-Xi), begin to become involved in Mrs. Tang’s world. Bodies surface, roots go deeper, and it all gathers together in a scandalous pool.
Separating this from other similarly themed films is a pair of motifs that work together to both add to the drama and defy the convention. On the one hand, a series of Rashomon style flashbacks to a critical turning point put us in the noirish territory of not trusting anyone. Yet twinned with this is a pair of blind musicians who regularly appear as an objective Greek chorus of sorts, cutting through the subterfuge and offering frank appraisals in song.
These moments are the most abstract of the film, bordering on the surreal. Case in point is the duo literally sitting on the skyline of the city giving their creed. The rest of the film is just as lavish in its production design, with detailed interiors as beautiful as the rain-soaked flashbacks. Jade, in various forms including jewellery, is also an important feature throughout the film.
The central performances are all strong, especially Kara Wai as the shade-throwing family head, and the gradual corruption in Vicky Chen’s (Angels Wear White) character. Yet it’s Wu Ke-Xi’s roller coaster of a performance that steals the show, culminating to a massive reveal about her past that lands like a hand grenade in the existing drama.
The more literal translation of the original Mandarin title is ‘Guanyin in Blood,’ referring to the East Asian bodhisattva that appears as a recurring motif in the film. It’s this intersection between traditional practice and modern storytelling convention that marks THE BOLD, THE CORRUPT, AND THE BEAUTIFUL as something more than base melodrama. Smart and sophisticated, it’s a delicate mix right up until the very end.
2017 | Taiwan | DIRECTOR: Yang Ya-che | WRITERS: Yang Ya-che | CAST: Kara Hui, Wu Ke-xi, Vicky Chen | DISTRIBUTOR: A Really Happy Film/Vie Vision Pictures, TWFF (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 112 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 28 July 2018 (TWFF)
