{"id":34532,"date":"2021-02-13T00:21:44","date_gmt":"2021-02-13T05:21:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=34532"},"modified":"2021-02-11T16:52:30","modified_gmt":"2021-02-11T21:52:30","slug":"tapei-suicide-story-2020-slamdance-film-festival-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2021\/02\/13\/tapei-suicide-story-2020-slamdance-film-festival-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Tapei Suicide Story (2020) [Slamdance Film Festival 2021]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Director KEFF\u2019s \u2018Tapei Suicide Story\u201d is one of the most somber dramas I\u2019ve ever seen. It\u2019s a film about life affirmation but also about the inevitability of death. Do we have control over our lives if we can control our own deaths? Are we merely embracing fate and are oblivious to it? \u201cTapei Suicide Story\u201d is a very quiet and quaint drama that works on a very dark and inherently morbid premise.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Set in a Dystopian reality, we meet a young receptionist who works in a suicide hotel in Taiwan. In this hotel, the guests check in, decide their own fate, and commit suicide. The next day, he and the cleaning crew attend to their guests and continue the cycle. One day when he meets a young woman who intends to commit suicide. But when he finds out she\u2019s reluctant to commit her task, he tries to convince her otherwise.<\/p>\n

The movie sets up the Suicide Hotel perfectly to where we could imagine it being introduced to our society. KEFF doesn\u2019t particularly paint a bright picture of life and living in Taiwan, as most of the exterior scenes is presented within desolate alleys with gray skies overhead. When they\u2019re in the hotel, it\u2019s a mostly sterile and cold environment similar to a Funeral home, as the designers of the hotel make almost zero effort to entice clients to feel any sense of warmth. The crew is so desensitized by their client\u2019s final scenes, that the sight of a hanging corpse doesn\u2019t faze either of them. It\u2019s when the clients opt out of the suicide that they\u2019re often shocked and sent in to disarray.<\/p>\n

The film is mostly a two person piece with Yuhua Sung and Tender Huang presenting conflicting ideas about the value of life, and whether he realizes it or not, Huang\u2019s receptionist is working toward convincing Sun to re-think her planned suicide. Even when they\u2019re casually discussing their own lives, you can sense that this one person will grant him some departure from the bleakness of the suicide hotel. All things considered, KEFF opts for an ending that borders on ambiguous. While I appreciate some things being left for us to discuss, the climax to \u201cTapei Suicide Story\u201d is much too cryptic to arouse anything but confusion. That said, KEFF\u2019s dark drama is fascinating and compelling; it\u2019ll definitely offer you something different in the realm of drama.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>The Slamdance Film Festival is running virtually from February 12th to February 25th.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Director KEFF\u2019s \u2018Tapei Suicide Story\u201d is one of the most somber dramas I\u2019ve ever seen. It\u2019s a film about life affirmation but also about the inevitability of death. Do we have control over our lives if we can control our own deaths? Are we merely embracing fate and are oblivious to it? \u201cTapei Suicide Story\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1284,12,2655],"tags":[111,113,302,367,906],"class_list":["post-34532","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-festivalsevents","category-movie-reviews","category-slamdance","tag-arthouse","tag-asian","tag-drama","tag-foreign","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34532","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34534,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34532\/revisions\/34534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}