HELP ME EROS
Taiwan 2007, 103 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Lee Kang- Sheng Yen.
Help me Eros is the second film by actor turned director Lee Kang- Sheng. His first film was The Missing in 2003. However, he has appeared in very many of the films of his executive producer, Tsai Ming- Liang including The Wayward Cloud, Goodbye Dragon Inn, and I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone.
In many ways the film is very nihilistic, a comment on the moral climate in Taiwan as observed by the writer-director. He portrays the young man who lost his money on the stock exchange, money being very important for Chinese people. He is also seen trying his luck in the lottery in his state of depression. He almost seals himself inside his apartment, grows marijuana, is stoned a lot of the time, but contacts a helpline. He becomes friendly with the woman on the other end of the line, not knowing that she is rather large, over-fed with the food of her cook-husband. He talks with her on a help line and also communicates by chat room. He also becomes friendly with the girls downstairs who, provocatively dressed, sell beetle nut to passers by.
He becomes lost in this closed-in world, becomes more involved in erotic experiences, which are presented, with striking candour and explicitness (almost as explicit as Ming- Liang’s The Wayward Cloud).
The film is artistically made - the colours and lights of Taiwan, the city itself, the enclosed world that can lead to drugs and suicide, the enclosed world of erotic experience - that seems to lead nowhere. The film seems to lack any kind of moral framework- something which is the feature of Ming- Liang’s films as well. The disciple has emulated his master.
1. A film from Taiwan? A portrait of Taiwanese life? Pessimistic? Nihilistic?
2. The craft of the film, the style of the photography, light and darkness, interiors, the city of Taiwan? The drug sequences? the erotic sequences? The ordinary business experiences? Life in the streets? The long takes, the time for contemplation? The poses, the framing of the scenes - especially the erotic scenes? The musical score?
3 . The focus on Ah Jie, his age, in the apartment, his losing all his money, his inhaling the marijuana plants? His ringing the Help Line? The relationship with Chye on the phone? The chat room? His not realising that Chye was the fat woman in the photo? His callous statements to her? Following her? The women downstairs, his encountering the women, paying for the cigarettes, the betel nut? Picking up the women? The relationship with Shin? Dependence, friendship, going out with her, the exhilaration of the car ride and the police photo? The erotic encounters, the sexuality and sensuality? The effect on him? His wandering around, his uncertainties? Drawing the lottery, running after the truck with the TV information? His losing? The attempted suicide with the gas? The failure? Opening the window? The lottery tickets all falling on the street? Shin finding the photo? What happened to him? Why?
4. Chye, a fat woman, her husband's cooking? Her own sensuality? Listening to the people on the Help Line? The interchanges in the chat room? Her sitting in the bath with the eels? Her going to
his apartment to save him?
5. Shin, the betel girls, the provocative dress, attracting the male customers, sexuality and brutality? The girls working together? Shin in this context? What she hoped for from Ah Jie, going with him, the car ride, the sexuality? His ambiguous attitudes towards her? The sexual encounter with the group?
6. What was the audience left with? Admiration for the craft of the film? A glimpse into an exotic and sealed world? Moral values and questions? Challenges? Pessimism?
