Welcome to The Happy Days

五星级鱼干女

Taiwan, 2015, colour, 2.35:1, 105 mins.

Director: Lin Xiaoqian 林孝谦 [Gavin Lin].

Rating: 6/10.

Wacky comedy centred on a nerdy ditz trying to run a bankrupt hotel works better in bits than as a whole.

STORY

Beitou district, north of Taibei, the present day. The ditzy Fang Ru (Ke Jiayan), grand-daughter of Shumin (Chen Shufang), the elderly owner of Japanese-style hot-springs hotel The Happy Days 今日温泉旅馆, dreams of going to the US to study. When Shumin breaks her leg and is put out of action for six months, Fang Ru offers to take over the running of the hotel for NT$1 million, the amount she still needs for her trip. Shumin turns her down and instead says she can keep any profit she makes in the six months. Fang Ru agrees, and takes over the running – along with longtime employees Auntie Hao (Lv Xuefeng) and Uncle Quan (Cai Mingxiu) – only to find the hotel is NT$2 million in debt. One day there appears at the door a US college drop-out, 25-year-old Allen Thompsen (Zhou Hou’an), looking for accommodation in exchange for work. Fang Ru decides to take him on, reckoning a foreigner could attract business. While in Shumin’s room, Allen Thompsen finds a violin signed by the famous Japanese player-composer Yamada Tomoo, who had stayed at the hotel back in 1972 when he was a young man (Hayashida Michio) and Shumin a young woman (Ye Xingchen). Allen Thompsen admits to Fang Ru that he planned the whole trip to Beitou to try to win back his ex-girlfriend, Christina, who idolises Yamada Tomoo. He offers Fang Ru US$30,000 for the violin, even though it’s not hers to sell. She asks for a deposit of US$2,000, which is all the available cash he has. He gives her the money, but first there’s the more pressing problem to solve of attracting customers to the hotel.

REVIEW

Running the whole gamut from crazy comedy to heart-tugging melodrama, Welcome to The Happy Days 五星级鱼干女 is the most out-there production so far by writer-director Lin Xiaoqian 林孝谦 [Gavin Lin], 36, whose second feature, Revenge of the Factory Woman 与爱别离 (2010), heralded a potentially fresh talent among younger Taiwan film-makers. After the box-office flop of his China-set road romance A Moment of Love 回到爱开始的地方 (2013), with Zhou Yumin 周渝民 [Vic Chou] and Liu Shishi 刘诗诗, this fourth feature is very much a return to roots, with plenty of local humour and character actors, loads of earthy Hokkien mixed into a dialogue soup of Mandarin, English and Japanese, and a memorably spaced-out performance by Ke Jiayan 柯佳嬿, 31, an actress better known for more serious roles (Miao Miao 渺渺, 2008; Monga 艋舺, 2010; Night Market Hero 鸡排英雄, 2011; Partners in Crime 共犯, 2014).

Part of the Metro of Love 台北爱情捷运 series – produced by Ye Tianlun 叶天伦 (Night Market Hero) and centred on various Taibei MRT stations – Welcome was one of three out of the six completed projects to also get theatrical showings. (The whole series was broadcast on TV in 2016.) One can see why: it fits snugly into the island’s current craze for “community” comedy and has a broad range of names, a movie feel, and a story that linguistically sums up Taiwan’s cultural influences of the past century.

The MRT theme is only paid lip-service with a few shots of Xinbeitou station before the film settles down at a small, family-run, Japanese-style hotel, where Fang Ru, the wacky young grand-daughter of the owner, is faced with running the joint when grandma breaks her leg. After finding it’s heavily in debt, and can’t attract any customers, hope arrives in the form of a US college drop-out looking for a bed in exchange for work. The expected romance between him and Fang Ru is only tackled, rather clumsily, in the final section, though thankfully with plenty of comedy. Inbetween, there’s a flashback story about grandma and a veteran Japanese violinist who stayed at the hotel some 40 years earlier, lots of action devoted to attracting guests, and a whole central section in which the film basically stops for comic routines by local names – chubby actress Liao Huizhen 廖慧珍 and actor Gao Mengjie 高盟杰 as a pair of undercover hotel inspectors, and US-born model-actress Mo Yunwen 莫允雯 [Christina Mok] as a pouty super-model.

The script by Lin and regular co-writer Lv Anxian 吕安弦 (formerly known as Lv Longshi 吕鑨谥) doesn’t background Fang Ru at all, apart from making her a ditz with a dream of studying in the US, and the whole backstory of the grandma (heartily played by veteran Chen Shufang 陈淑芳) is cobbled together with a few flashbacks. It’s almost as if Lin knows the script hardly makes much sense on anything but a sitcommy level and therefore has Ke over-act wildly for most of the time. But whether wearing big, goofy glasses, twitching like a breakdancer, going ha-ha-ha-ha-ha, or directly addressing the camera, Ke is a delight and fully lives up to the film’s Chinese title, a phrase derived from Japanese slang which roughly means “Five-Star Female Slob” and implies a woman who’s also given up on love.

Ke has OK chemistry with half-Chinese actor Zhou Hou’an 周厚安 [Andrew Chau] – son of Hong Kong singer Zhou Huajian 周华健 [Emil Chau] – who over-acts less convincingly as the American drop-out but has a naive charm that fits the ridiculous story, and both interact well with veteran Lv Xuefeng 吕雪凤 as the hotel’s crazed receptionist. The problem is that the film doesn’t sustain any of its several tones for very long: the physical and verbal comedy is good when it’s happening but isn’t woven very deeply into the film’s fabric. Despite all that, the ending does have some emotional traction, thanks to the likeable characters and the film’s uncynical tone.

Technical credits are all fine, with bright, clean visuals by Lin’s regular d.p. Feng Xinhua 冯信华, trim editing by Lin Zhenghong 林郑宏, and a simple piano score when needed.

CREDITS

Produced by Good Image (TW), Green Film Production (TW), Gala Television (TW).

Script: Lv Anxian [Lv Longxi], Lin Xiaoqian [Gavin Lin]. Photography: Feng Xinhua. Editing: Lin Zhenghong. Music: Qin Xuzheng. Song lyrics: Lin Xiaoqian [Gavin Lin]. Art direction: Tang Jiahong. Sound: Wu Baichun.

Cast: Ke Jiayan (Fang Ru), Zhou Hou’an [Andrew Chau] (Allen Thompson), Lv Xuefeng (Auntie Hao/Mrs. Good), Chen Shufang (Shumin, Fang Ru’s grandmother), Ye Xingchen (young Shumin), Cai Mingxiu (Uncle Quan), Hayashida Michio (Yamada Tomoo), Zhou Mingfu (young Yamada Tomoo), Liao Huizhen (Xiao Rongnv), Gao Mengjie (Yang Guo), Mo Yunwen [Christina Mok] (Zhenzhen/J-J, super-model), Zhang Zhehao (young Quan).

Premiere: BiFan Film Festival (Vision Express), Bucheon, South Korea, 18 Jul 2015.

Release: Taiwan, 18 Mar 2016.