MIAO MIAO review
It seems there's always room for one more piece of Taiwanese queer cinema – Cheng Hsiao-Tse's debut film [i]Miao Miao[/i] continues the newly established tradition of fluffy, soap-opera teen angst packaged to appeal to straight girls and lesbians alike, but does the backing of Wong Kar-Wai's Jet Tone Pictures and some relatively new faces in the cast set this apart from the competition? Find out after the break.
It is an odd niche to have chosen, but in recent years Taiwan seems to have become hell-bent on cornering the international market in glossy, non-threatening teen dramas dealing with coming-of-age and/or adolescent sexuality. It's as if some cabal of studio money-men, fed up with trying to foist the films of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Tsai Ming-Liang and Edward Yang onto a younger generation who patently weren't interested, got together circa 2004 and decided Chen Yin-Jung's successful gay-themed comedy-drama [i]Formula 17[/i] was going to be the start of a [i]new[/i] New Wave. Urban malaise, loneliness and desperation were out, while pretty young fashion plates wondering why staying BFF never felt quite like enough – or sensitive hunks unsure whether to take that bromance to the next level – were in.
Cheng Hsiao-Tse's debut [i]Miao Miao[/i] is the latest in a string of at least eight such films in the space of barely three years. Backed by Wong Kar-Wai's Jet Tone production company and boasting several industry veterans among the crew (including Wong Kar-Wai's long-time editor), the film comes with an aura of prestige right from the start – a whirl of bright, colourful jump-cuts painted in catalogue gloss where happily the cinematographer turns out to have an eye for imagery and composition at the same time.
With [i]Miao Miao[/i] clocking in at under ninety minutes, the director wastes little time in setting up a relatively familiar story. Shy, retiring transfer student Dai Shih-Miao is newly arrived in Taipei. Raised in Japan, she finds her awkwardness and difficulties with the language are attracting the wrong kind of attention from her prospective schoolmates; to dissuade the boys trying to persuade her she's in need of their 'protection', she approaches cheery tomboy Xiao-Ai one afternoon while waiting for the train both girls ride home. Xiao-Ai is already fascinated with the new arrival and before long they're fast friends, swapping mobile numbers and nicknames for each other. 'Miao-Miao' turns out to be an accomplished baker, joining Xiao-Ai's friends in their cookery club after school; the two visit each other on a regular basis, sharing girl-talk and trading family secrets.
This budding relationship looks set to become a love triangle once the girls discover a mysterious record store tucked away down the backstreets of the city, a CD store run by the dour and withdrawn Chen Fei. Forever withdrawn inside his headphones, seemingly unconcerned about customers, overheads or any such thing, Chen Fei appears obsessed with tracking down a copy of the one demo a certain local band released before they abruptly disbanded soon afterwards. Determined to find out more about whatever might explain his unwillingness to even crack a smile, Miao-Miao and Xiao-Ai begin repeatedly visiting the store – yet while Miao-Miao realises she's falling in puppy-love with the surly young man, Xiao-Ai struggles to understand why she's so upset her friend seems to be moving away from her.
Again, this is familiar ground for Taiwanese youth cinema, with [i]Spider Lilies[/i], [i]Drifting Flowers[/i] [b]and[/b] [i]Candy Rain[/i] having gone over it in recent years. There's little if anything here to surprise anyone who's ever seen any brand of teenage drama. To be fair to the writers, the script rarely tries to lend the narrative any kind of undeserved gravitas, though it does fall prey to temptation once or twice – Miao-Miao's particular emotional baggage is fanciful but fairly affecting, but a later conversation with Chen Fei skirts very close to being painfully contrived. Nonetheless, everyone involved seems happy to let the characters and situations speak for themselves more often than not.
The young cast help a great deal in this respect; Keh Jia-Yan as Miao-Miao and French-Chinese Sandrine Pinna as Xiao-Ai are excellent as the two leads. Neither are conventionally attractive, Keh distinctively tall and slender, Pinna something like a young Lily Allen, and they manage an easy, naturalistic on-screen chemistry for all the stylised, dear diary sheen on the film. Fan Chi-Wei as Chen Fei is somewhat less impressive, his perpetual sulk coming across as something like a cartoon and his big revelation not so much telegraphed as casually brushed off. Nonetheless, all three have their standout moments and are never less than personable.
The slick handling of familiar melodramatic tropes, the lack of any real peril and general childlike eagerness to please leave [i]Miao Miao[/i] feeling almost bewilderingly 'nice' for large stretches of its running time. Both cast and crew work overtime to get the viewer to like these young people and while any cynic will chalk this up to blatant emotional manipulation of the target audience, the filmmakers' efforts still have the power to affect more than teenage girls. Miao-Miao and Xiao-Ai's problems feel at least [b]believable[/b], if perhaps not 'real' per se. The pair of them readily invite empathy and lead the viewer to hope everything turns out better rather than worse. Despite the story being even more dreamily innocent than any of its peers, the few minor moments of physical intimacy it does allow the two leads come across as genuinely touching.
On the other hand, despite the genuine emotion on display and the (commendable) lack of any perfect resolution, the biggest problem with the non-stop positivity is the film ends up feeling frustratingly hollow. Keh and Pinna are talented actresses, but little in the script allows them to portray any kind of real pain, or show much warmth beyond fleshing out predictable stereotypes. No matter how ludicrous its plot turned out, [i]Spider Lilies[/i] was far more affecting, with more of a sense its characters were living, breathing human beings with a physical side to them, people who had needs and urges beyond fairytale daydreams. [i]Drifting Flowers[/i] had sickness, senility and imminent death. Even [i]Blue Gate Crossing[/i], for all its airy dismissal of its central story thread, still gave the impression Guey Lun-Mei's character was a girl tugged between two extremes; [i]Miao Miao[/i] doesn't leave the viewer thinking it [b]needs[/b] grief and distress, but at its weakest moments it does struggle to suggest the story [i]matters[/i].
Still, despite all this, probably the film's quietest, most significant success lies in making the viewer feel genuinely guilty at finding fault with it. It is a beautiful film – it never really manages iconic yet proves continually eye-catching – and watching something that means so well is never less than a pleasure. Both songs and score are forgettable, but you feel the soundtrack is more there to provide atmosphere than anything else, and even at its most cheerily disposable the acting is more than enough to compensate. Keh Jia-Yan and Sandrine Pinna both deserve a good deal more work on the strength of their efforts here, and the small supporting cast back them up admirably.
No-one wants to excuse lazy product that does nothing to distinguish itself from the competition. At the same time an unabashed commercial film lacking any pretensions to something greater, one with genuine feeling for its subject matter (no matter how shallow), is often preferable to any number of 'worthy' stories. Few people out of their teens would call [i]Miao Miao[/i] a classic of its narrow little sub-genre, yet it remains a smartly acted, visually appealing movie capable of leaving the viewer with a smile on their face, something many more people will look back on fondly than [i]Vive L'Amour[/i] or [i]City of Sadness[/i]. Popcorn it may be, but no-one should begrudge giving [i]Miao Miao[/i] a cheer for its achievements, modest or otherwise.
