A Flower in a Storm
While browsing through the film covers at my Chinatown
video store, I came across this curiosity that I could not resist for reasons
that now escape me. This is a Taiwanese weepy from 1983 that has Sibelle
Hu and Sally Yeh in it just before both were to hit the big time in Hong
Kong. Sally was to become a star the following year with Tsui Hark’s Shanghai
Blues and Sibelle became a star in 1985 as the target of desire by the
hapless crew in My Lucky Stars.
I have been told that initially Sibelle was groomed
to replace Brigitte Lin as the queen of Taiwanese weepies, but this was
my first opportunity to watch her strut her melodramatic stuff. From this
film anyway, let us say that Sibelle was fortunate that the horny guys
in My Lucky Stars came along! After having watched Brigitte in more weepies
than should be legal, Sibelle clearly is not ready to replace Brigitte
– as was no one else of course. At any rate, the Taiwanese weepie was a
genre on its way out the door – as Hong Kong soon overwhelmed the Taiwanese
film industry with its product.
This one follows the basic tenets of weepies –
love in conflict with social mores resulting in seemingly hopeless complications
that either lead to resolution or end in tragedy. With the parents both
dead, Sibelle has had to assume the responsibility for bringing up her
two younger siblings. She has saved up enough money to send her brother
to the United States to earn his Phd., while she spoils Sally with everything
Sally wants. How does she do this? The old fashioned way – by hooking of
course! Sally meets Sibelle for dinner and whines that she is running out
of money – Sibelle tells her to wait for thirty minutes and sure enough
she is back with a fist full of money in no time after a quickie at the
friendly neighborhood brothel.
Sibelle finds herself falling in love with a slightly
dumpy noodle stall owner (Liang Hsao Shen) who doesn’t know what she does
for a living (shades of Beyond Hypothermia!). Sally meanwhile has set her
eye on the son of a wealthy businessman. Of course this all goes to hell
when the noodle maker decides he has served enough noodles one evening
and takes his savings for a night out with the boys. Who should walk into
his rented room, but his “Goddess” Sibelle. Then at a “meet the in-laws”
luncheon it turns out that Sibelle is already intimately familiar with
the father of the boyfriend. Ah, fate can be a tricky son of a gun. All
this plays out with the interest of someone telling you about the cold
sore they had last week and in the background grinds the incessant elevator
music of Bridge Over Troubled Waters.
My rating for this film: 3.0