Mahjong

A black comedy about a motley crew of Chinese and foreigners in the vibrant metropolis Taipei. The romance from A Brighter Summer Day and the tragi-comic tone of Taipei Story and A Confucian Confusion have made way for an ironic, sometimes biting sketch of a group of idle kids. While the 18-year-old Parisienne Marthe finds her British boyfriend Marcus in the arms of his Chinese lover, Red Fish, leader of the gang, has very different problems: his father, a dubious businessman with enormous debts, has disappeared. The storylines cross when Marthe, who is hiding from her boyfriend, starts a relationship with the gang member Luen-luen.Trigger-happy gangsters, a love-drunk teacher and the would-be mystic ‘Little Buddha’ – Yang lets his protagonists meet like the stones in a game of Mahjong: each encounter means a new possibility, each step can bring profit or loss. Mahjong is regarded as one of Edward Yang’s most accessible films. Some scenes are infectiously funny, in others the dark fringe of society dominates. Among the actors we recognise the productive Hong Kong born Carrie Ng and scriptwriter/film-maker Wu Nien-jen (of A Borrowed Life).