Summary
A near-future spin on Shakespeare continues to play with gender roles, but gets a little lost in their exits and their entrances.
Shakespeare continues to show up in the most unlikely places, which is an impressive feat over 400 years after his death. AS WE LIKE IT (揭大歡喜) borrows some loose plotting from its namesake, but perhaps takes the bit about the whole world being a stage a little too liberally.
Set in a futuristic version of Taipei, writer/directors Hung-i Chen and Muni Wei use a hyperlinked approach to storytelling. Together with co-writer Sung Kuo Chen (Remmy Sung), they weave together vignettes of several would-be couples wooing for attention. The primary potential pairing is Orlando (Aggie Hseih) and Rosalind (Hsueh-Fu Kuo), who is actually disguised as a man named Roosevelt.
Gender has always been one of the central themes to As You Like It, with various critics dissecting and praising the playwright’s deconstruction of gender roles. Recalling the Elizabethan tradition of all-male casts, the directors have followed suit with an all-female cast. The resulting androgynous aesthetic is one of the film’s greatest strengths, although it occasionally runs the risk of novelty.
From the brightly coloured CG opening, Chen and Wei nod to some of the vivid style of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet more than once. Indeed, there are more direct quotes from that play in the first act that the actual source material. At other times, there’s a Scott Pilgrim inspired fight scene. The problem is that they seem so enamoured with this shopfront that the linking segments between seen get lost in the mix.
Take the two primary locations as examples. For some unexplained reason, the film principally takes place in an Internet-free neighbourhood. This allows the filmmakers free reign to introduce a kind of hyperkinetic cyberpunk, but doesn’t seem to serve the story. Letters are sent using huge typesetting devices, and there is a Legendary Google Bookstore. Meanwhile, there’s a new development underway called the Forest of Arden, a head-trip of a garden floating inside of a blimp. The whole thing looks like it is set inside Taylor Swift’s Lover.
If the aesthetic is confused, then the rest of the film is just confusing. While trying to figure out how any of the aforementioned plot points connect, or blink some of the vivid pink vistas out of your retinas, Chen and Wei throw in a mystic matchmaker, a cartoon snail and a kidnap subplot for good measure. Even if you are familiar with the original play, you may be hard pressed to know what’s going on at any given moment.
Thankfully the cast is pretty likeable. Popular drama star and singer/model Puff Kuo has a ball as playing with traditional gender roles. French-Chinese actress Camille Chalons, in the Celia role of modern day ‘royalty,’ floats gracefully above the whole thing, lighting up any scene she’s featured in.
Given Taiwan’s broader attitudes to LGBTQI+ issues have only recently progressed, AS WE LIKE IT may seem like a quantum leap. (Especially when compared with last year’s The Gangs, the Oscars and the Walking Dead). Yet as this chaotic, cheeky and often undergraduate collage of influences rolls into its statement denouement, one can’t help thinking what a bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.
AS WE LIKE IT plays on demand 50th-anniversary edition of IFFR. The festival runs from 1 – 7 February 2021 on the IFFR.com platform. Check out the website for screening details.
2021 |Australia | DIRECTOR: Chen Hung-i, Muni Wei | WRITER: Chen Hung-i, Muni Wei, Sung Kuo Chen (Remmy Sung) | CAST: Aggie Hsieh, Puff Kuo, Camille Chalons| DISTRIBUTOR: Swallow Wings Films, International Film Festival Rotterdam | RUNNING TIME: 107 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 1-7 February 2021 (NL)
