Eighteen is as capricious as life itself, filled with surprising turns. It is partially a tragic love story, but the film also comprises social commitment. Eighteen is also stylistically daring with a fragmented narrative structure and a very inventive cinematography.Not much ‘happens’ in the film. A man, a ‘mediocre manager of amediocre travel agency’, one day goes for a beer in a fishing village and sticks around to play the game 18, even though he has never played it before. 18 is a dice game with simple rules. Four dice are thrown in a (rice) bowl, two have to form a pair. The other two are added together for the score. If all four dice are the same, you win. The man forgets his wife and daughter and keeps playing. He has an identity crisis and a midlife-crisis but at the same time he feels free for the first time in ages.Ho P’ing confers all kinds of metaphorical meanings upon the dice game 18. For instance on Taiwan you can’t throw more than 12, but on the mainland you can. ‘That makes you think about the abnormality of Taiwanese culture and of the people who have lived here for four-hundred years, according to P’ing.Tony Rayns spoke of ‘acid images, amphetamine cutting’. A Üfilm, in other words, filled with a freedom and madness seldom seen.
