Summary
A Taiwanese spin on the contemporary indie formula has some very clever turns and a terrific cast – but also a pervasive thread of something less tolerant.
On the surface, director Pin-Chuan Kao’s film has a lot going for it. Kind of Taiwan’s answer to Japanese cult hit One Cut of the Dead, it’s all about self-referential filmmaking comedy, with a zombie motif and mobsters.
In THE GANGS, THE OSCARS AND THE WALKING DEAD (江湖無難事 or more literally ‘No Trouble‘), two friends are attempting to make a zombie film. Without funds, they turn to a local mob boss who insists on casting his girlfriend Shanny in the lead. When she turns up dead, the duo scramble to cover it up while continuing to shoot.
What begins as a weird spin on Weekend at Bernies soon becomes a more complex comedy of errors thanks to Yi Ti Yao’s dual-role as her own doppelganger. For some reason, Kao decided to make Shanny’s twin a transgender character, adding an element of gender misdirection in the middle of a gangster comedy.
For a film like this to truly work, the laughs just have to be there. Perhaps if I hadn’t seen the documentary Disclosure the night before, an exploration of trans stereotypes on film and television, I may not have been as tuned into the sheer amount of casual homophobia and transphobic jokes that serve as a basis for much of the narrative. Indeed, if you hold up Disclosure‘s checklist – including artificially deepened voices, unsettling breast reveals, violent sickened reactions, award-winning cis actors playing trans – then this film hits almost all of them. One of the local posters even plays on these tropes, featuring a pair of feminine legs peeing while standing.
Even if you can put this all to one side, and you really shouldn’t, there’s just a lot happening here. Filled with unlikely twists and turns, the final act of the film is a series of non-linear plot points that do offer up some genuine (and violent) surprises. So, on a surface level it’s a technically well-made beast, and Yi Ti Yao’s award-winning performance certainly elevates the game.
Compared to other films from the region, parts of it are massively progressive, including the denouement which makes an attempt at redeeming some of the character reactions. Yet TGTOATWD bites off more than it can chew while using a trans character as a central comedy device. It’s 2020, and that simply isn’t good enough.
2019 | Taiwan| DIRECTOR: Kao Pin-Chuan | WRITERS: Birdy Fong, Yi-Ho Tsai | CAST: Roy Chiu, Di-Yang Huang, Yi Ti Yao | DISTRIBUTOR: Taiwan Film Festival (AUS)| RUNNING TIME: 105 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 9-30 July 2020 (TWFF)
