[Our thanks to Dustin Chang for the following review.]
The film starts with a love letter of a Japanese soldier on the voyage home from Taiwan at the end of WWII, as Japan lost the war and retreated back. He is leaving a girl name Tomoko behind. Te-Sheng Wei’s debut feature is both melancholic and optimistic in nature. Aga (Van Fan), a frustrated musician in Taipei comes home, a southern seaside resort town of Hengchun, on his motorbike (seems everyone in Taiwan drives a motorcycle). His stepfather, a proud son of Hengchun, city council chairman, uses his influence to give Aga a job as a postman - which he is terrible at. He’s always late, looses mail, and gets in to fight with a local cop for not wearing a helmet. It’s a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business and he’s not used to that. Aga finds an undeliverable package addressed in old Japanese style: Cape No. 7 Hengchun. He opens it up and reads its contents: seven love letters, and a faded picture of a girl on the beach.
Parallel to the story in the love letters, we have Tomoko (Rie Tanaka), a whiny, cold faced Japanese model who got marooned in Taiwan, now working as a coordinator for a upcoming Spring rock concert on the beach. She has to organize an opening act for a visiting Japanese pop star (Kousuke Atari) before she goes home. Chairman insists on only hiring local musicians for the band because he can’t stand his beautiful town being taken over by non-natives. The audition is held and the band is assembled with knick-knack of flavorful locals - a short-tempered aborigine cop (Rauma), a young girl who plays an organ in church (Dada), a diligent liquor salesman (Marusun), a lovesick mechanic (Frog), and an 80 year-old man who’d do anything to get on stage (Old Mao). After a spirited tit-for-tat with Chairman, Aga reluctantly joins the band as the singer/songwriter/guitarist. Tomoko and Aga hook up. But the inspiration for a new song is hard to come by. Where would they ever find it?
The premise is fairly bland, and the love story, not so convincing. But the elements that make Cape No. 7 special are the music, all the charming local characters and details. Van Fan has a great voice, a good presence on stage and plays very catchy rock tunes. It’s a very regional film: locals often make fun of Tomoko’s inflected Taiwanese and Mandarin. The population of Hengchun is very diverse: Rauma’s of Rukai Tribe origin, Marusun is a Hakka (Southern Taiwanese people, descendants in diaspora throughout South East Asia) and there are the tourists and foreigners. I’m pretty sure I missed out on a lot of Taiwanese in-jokes. A big box office hit at home (right below Titanic), one could easily see the broad appeal of this film. As they banter, engage in small romances and attend local events, one feels warmth of its native people and its beautifully photographed surroundings. As the film closes with Rose on the Heath, an internationally recognized children’s rhyme, performed on stage in front of thousands of adoring fans, Cape No. 7 is a hopeful, energetic and endlessly charming film, where you don’t feel its 129 minute running time, and don’t want it to end.
Review by Dustin Chang.