Au revoir Taipei

The taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang shows in his film Yi Yi - A One and a Two the life of a family in modern Taipei. NJ is a man in his mid-forties. He is married, a father of two children and successful in his job - still he is no longer happy with himself and with his life. While NJ starts seing his old flame again his mother-in-law is in a coma. It is NJ's eight year old son who guides us through everyday life of the family and who asks critical questions and surprises the spectators with his experiments in the water. The older sister has her first experiences with love and learns that one can not force felicity.

A lady fugitive on the run from corrupt government officials is joined in her endeavors by an unambitious painter and skilled Buddhist monks.

An intoxicating, time-bending experience bathed in the golden glow of oil lamps and wreathed in an opium haze, this gorgeous period reverie by Hou Hsiao-hsien traces the romantic intrigue, jealousies, and tensions swirling around four late-nineteenth-century Shanghai “flower houses,” where courtesans live confined to a gilded cage, ensconced in opulent splendor but forced to work to buy back their freedom. Among the regular clients is the taciturn Master Wang (Tony Leung Chiu-wai), whose relationship with his longtime mistress (Michiko Hada) is roiled by a perceived act of betrayal. Composed in a languorous procession of entrancing long takes, Flowers of Shanghai evokes a vanished world of decadence and cruelty, an insular universe where much of the dramatic action remains tantalizingly offscreen—even as its emotional fallout registers with quiet devastation.

After a successful intrigue, General Yu is executed by his political opponent eunuch Zhao and his children are banished from China. But the General's children are a thorn in Zhao's side and so he does everything to kill them on their way into exile. He sets an ambush at the lonely hostel at the dragon gate. But the faithful followers of the assassinated general rush to help the children. A fight for life and death unleashes itself.

This movie gives us a glimpse at life in northern Taiwan. The main person is Kao, a 37-years-old man who has constantly to solve problems created by his younger brother Flat Head and his girlfriend Pretzel. As a non-stop schemer, Kao devises a plan to raise money by trading subsidized pigs to the government for cash. The ruse works, but when the temperamental Flat Head antagonizes the wrong people, the two find themselves caught up in a dangerous game of corrupt politics.