YI NIAN ZHI CHU (DO OVER)

China, 2006, 113 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Yu- Chieh Cheng.

Do Over is an intriguing film from Taiwan. Do Over is the first feature film from the director Cheng Yu- Chieh who had made some award-winning short films.

This is a film which requires constant attention as it moves from one story to another, focusing on issues of identity, reincarnation, relationships, Chinese violence, aimlessness. The audience also has to be alert to the various time shifts. The action takes place over limited time but moves backwards and forwards in time and focuses on the developments of different characters in the way that their stories interlock.

The film opens with the focus on one of the assistants on a film set, one who feels himself lucky because he has to act as stand-in and be kissed by the leading actress, but who also feels that he will win the lottery. The film shifts then to focusing on an illegal immigrant who has been waiting for years for his citizenship and the criminal group who supply him with an identification. The film also focuses on a drug addict, Rat, who is also a crook and finds himself in a deserted hospital who has to try to work out what has happened to him, retracing his footsteps. In the meantime, the focus goes to a criminal boss who has suffered from insomnia, his becoming paranoid about people plotting against him, only to find further violence. He is connected with the director of the film with which the film opened, the young director needing money and not being able to decide how to end the film.

Once the audience has seen the film, the various characters and pieces fall into place – but the film is so well made that one wants to make the effort to understand the characters and follow the plot.

1.The impact of the film? Interest? Entertainment? Challenge?

2.The visuals of the film: Taiwan, the open roads, the city, the film set, gangsters’ meetings, ordinary situations? Hospitals? Anonymous locations? The combination of these to give a real and surreal atmosphere? The musical score?

3.The structure of the film: the five different stories, the same time span, the intercutting of the stories, the interconnection of the stories and characters? The revisiting of time? Actions and consequences?

4.Themes of identity, identity in time, the nature of the past, the uncertainty of the future? Change, reincarnation, repetition? New birth? New death? How well did the film integrate these more philosophical themes into the narrative?

5.The characters, the events – in linear form, the gangsters, the director, the assistant on the film, the young couple, the enigmatic Butterfly Woman? The symbolism of the butterfly on the woman’s back? For the final scene of the film? Trying to get the butterfly to fly?

6.Pang, the assistant, on the road, stopping the traffic? The insults? The irony of finding the illegal immigrant was one of those blowing the horn? His going to the set, his low self-esteem, his size, awkwardness? His being sent to get material from the car, his buying the lottery ticket? His standing in for the actor, lying next to the actress, his falling in love with her, her touching his hand? Listening to the results of the lottery?

7.Ding Ahn, as an illegal immigrant, the eight years to get the documents, the meeting with his friend, the ID card, its being issued, kept away from him? The confrontation, the getting into the car, the drive? The risk to his life? Getting the gun, confronting his friend?

8.The crook, the drug addict, in hospital, no-one present, his loss of memory? The bloodstains, no wound? The girl, the party with her? His decision to retrace his footsteps, the ambiguous location? His not knowing where he was? The encounter with the others, with the girl? The possibility of a future? Meeting the director?

9.The gangster boss, insomnia, his becoming paranoid, going to the meetings? The gun, going to his brother, the family situation, the brother and his lack of sympathy, the confrontation?

10.The director, his first film, the actor missing, getting Pang to stand in for the actor, the difficulties about the ending, his continued changes? His past, the money for the film, the gangster background, his trying to cope? His meetings? His meeting with the addict, the girl, being taken into another world?

11.A cross-section of Taiwanese culture and people? How interesting an overall portrait through the complex pieces of a jigsaw puzzle?