A Grama Verde de Casa

This early film by Hou Hsiao-hsien is a light-hearted feel-good movie. It is a very endearing story of goings-on in a small village, a lot of it seen through the eyes of children, and as such it is quite pure and somewhat naive.

I was smiling constantly for the first third of the film, because it so warmly and lovingly portrays its characters, particularly the schoolchildren. There is some drama as the film progresses but while it is genuinely touching it is not major and everything is resolved before the movie is over. The final act is yet again light-hearted although now we know that there is a little more than meets the eye. The film has a happy end and I left the theater with a lifted spirit.

When looking back to this director's films, especially his earlier ones, we've found out that we didn't have enough patience to watch them to the end, because these films just felt dated, the directing skill was raw and primitive; the dialog, woody and awkward; the acting by those actors who later had become famous and popular, only showed lousy acting talent that made us wonder how come these actors would have become famous later being A-list ones for so many years.

I don't know what was the purpose Hou liked so much to paint a picture of the earlier Taiwan. Maybe he thought the Taiwanese during the earlier time were more simple-minded, sincere, honest, naive, pure. The livelihood during that era was what the modern-day Taiwanese should have kept, even a martial law was in effect at that time, but it rarely affected and bothered the Taiwanese to have a normal daily life so long as you didn't openly against the KMT government. The martial law was a necessary evil during that time to prevent the possible invasion of the Chinese Communist force from Mainland China, but the people, the families, the kids, the society didn't feel they were controlled or suppressed by the martial law. When looking back, if compared what the livelihood people in Taiwan went on and went through with what the Chinese people in China by the iron-clad and atrocious cleansing process of the Chinese Communist Party, Taiwan, to most of the older generation Taiwanese, although poor and meager, was still a rather paradise-like haven, except to those fewer who didn't want to recognize and appreciate what the KMT government really tried to improve the living standard for all of the Taiwanese people and later became the DPP extremists.

Hou's films for the earlier Taiwanese livelihood and their people, the simple and innocent bygones with deep touch of melancholy reminiscence and retrospection were good, but from today's viewpoint and standard, the screenplays he crafted, the way he directed, those actors he signed on to play those roles he created...all of these are simply too outdated, primitive, raw and awkward. Those paintings might look good on the wall, but if you walk up to them too close, you'd find all the brushes were just too awkward to watch.

Again, we, my wife and I, both agreed at the same moment that the dialog and the acting by those leading actors were simply unbearable, so we've decided unanimously not to watch after 30 minutes' torture.

A chronicle of a city schoolteacher who sojourns in the southern countryside, this film amply demonstrates an early populist streak in Hou's work, marked especially by his remarkable handling of child actors and themes (to think that 1982 was the year when Hou and Steven "E.T." Spielberg were most aligned in their sensibilities). There's an incredibly Farrellian sequence devoted to how the kids handle their teacher's request to produce their own stool samples for tapeworm inspection, and a musical number about drinking cola that comes out of nowhere (right before the hero gets his *** kicked while attempting to stop a poacher from fishing illegally). Despite the wacky sequence of events, Hou's understanding of social milieu is already pronounced.

I came across this film by chance and it was a curiosity. It's worth watching just for that slice-of-life experience of rural Taiwan in the 1980s. I knew nothing about the country then and this was a nice little learner.

Ok, the story is not exactly engaging, but more a gentle meander. And the denouement is nicely predictable and very neatly wrapped up.

But for a pleasant 90 minutes, why not?

It's not a good movie, but not a terrible one, either. I think this was actually Hou's most profitable film in Taiwan. I know it was successful, anyway. It's certainly more commercial than any of his other films that I've seen. It stars a famous pop singer of the time, Kenny B (and, let me tell you, if this guy could be a pop star in Taiwan, YOU could just as easily). The press release said it was supposed to be a musical, but that was misleading. I was looking forward to it for that reason (a Hou musical? The thought intrigued me), but, alas, all I got was one terrible song in which Mr. B popped in once in a while, a teacher singing a song to a class (both of these are the same song, and it was about sharing cola!), and two songs performed by children at a school play near the end of the film. The plot concerns a teacher (Kenny B) fighting to get a law passed to protect the local stream, in which a couple of people have been spotted either poisoning fish or electrocuting them. Let me cut to the point: every scene that does not concern the kids who co-star in the film sucks. The kids are wonderful, just as they were in A Summer at Grandpa's, which Hou made the next year. They are a little less realistic than the children in Grandpa's, and a little more cutesy, but they are remarkable actors all of them. The screenplay is often horrible, but, all in all, it wasn't too bad. I will admit that it is not nearly as important or artistically accomplished as many of the Hou films that I enjoyed less than it. 6/10.