Prince of Tears

Lei Wangzi

(Taiwan , Hong Kong , China, 2009, 120 mins, 35mm)

Producer: Fruit Chan
Writer: Yonfan
Cinematographer: Chin Ting-Chang
Editors: Kong Chi-Leung, Derek Hui
Music: Yu Yat-Yiu
Sound: Tu Du-Che
Cast: Fan Chih-Wei, Terri Kwan, Joseph Chang, Zhu Xuan

Hong Kong’s entry to the Academy Awards, PRINCE OF TEARS uses a child’s point of view to to create a darkly lyrical fairy tale out of Taiwan’s postwar “White Terror,” when the Kuomingtang regime arrested and executed thousands of Taiwanese suspected of being communists. Little Zhou and her older sister Li view their parents’ happy marriage as a fairy-tale romance. Their father Han-sun (Joseph chang, also starring in our Closing Night Film, AU REVOIR TAPEI) is a handsome air force pilot, their mother Ping a beauty who chose him above all other suitors, including his best friend Ding. Although “Uncle Ding” frightens Zhou and Li with his scarred face, their father advises the girls not to judge by appearances; after all, things are not always as they seem. As Zhou and Li soon learn, this is the right warning for their time and place. Along with Hou Hsiao-hsien’s CITY OF SADNESS, PRINCE OF TEARS is one of the rare film depictions of Taiwan’s era of military witch hunts. “The story is my childhood,” remarks director Yonfan, best known for his features BISHONEN (1998) and PEONY PAVILION (2001). “I grew up in Taiwan during that period and it is all the people I know and all the people I see—it is my remembrance....What I want to say the most is not about politics, but about existence.” In this spirit of remembrance, the majority of the film tells the story through children’s eyes, both in the evolving perceptions of adult motives and in the unnaturally bright and romantic colors (captured in Chin Ting-chang’s vivid cinematography) of a child’s imagination, where fairy tale, nightmare and history are indistinguishable.

-- Misa Oyama

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