Pinoy Sunday 台北星期天

Story

Taiwan, the present day. Diosdado "Dado" Tagalog (Bayam Agbayani) and Manuel Dela Cruz (Jeffrey "Epy" Quizon) are among a group of Filipino overseas workers from Kalibo, in the southern Philippines, at a bicycle factory on the outskirts of Taipei. They live together in a dormitory with a strict, government-mandated curfew. Manuel has been unsuccessfully trying to date Celia (Alessandra De Rossi), a Filipina he met at a club, and Dado, despite having a wife and young daughter back home, has been getting friendly with another Filipina, Anna (Meryll Soriano). Feeling guilty when his wife is hospitalised after a traffic accident, Dado breaks off with Anna on her birthday. One Sunday, on their day off, Dado and Manuel chance upon a handsome red sofa that a house-moving couple leave on the pavement. Manuel sees it as "a gift from God" and persuades Dado to help him carry it back through the streets to their dormitory before curfew - a journey that turns into a life-changing odyssey.

Review

Malaysian-born, Taiwan-based director Ho Wi Ding (何蔚庭) was previously known for his shorts Respire (呼吸, 2005) and Summer Afternoon (夏午, 2008) and, despite its considerable merits, his first feature Pinoy Sunday (台北星期天) is basically a short in spirit. However, thanks to its technical polish, with richly-coloured photography by Jake Pollock (The Message 風聲, Monga 艋舺), fluid editing by Hsu Wei-yao (許惟堯) and a whistled, lazy-day score by Tsai Yao-jen (蔡曜任), the material just about makes it past the 80-minute finishing line, helped by a likeable pairing of Filipino comedians Bayam Agbayani and Jeffrey "Epy" Quizon as the two leads.

The movie proper starts at the 30-minute mark, after an extended intro that fills in some of the characters' background and then sets up and promptly disposes of the two female leads, played OK by Meryll Soriano (Roomboy) and Alessandra De Rossi (Kelvin Tong's 唐永健 The Maid 女傭). The movie proper could just as well have been called Two Pinoys and a Sofa, as the male leads, disappointed in love and in a foreign land they don't understand, carry the handsome red couch on a long journey that symbolises their desire to hit lucky and start a new life.

The movie is also remarkable for its fresh take on Taipei. Like many directors not native to a city, Ho conjures up a different feel to the Taiwanese capital from that purveyed in both arty and non-arty local productions. Part of this is due to the dialogue being 90% in Tagalog (rather than Mandarin or Hokkien) but is equally due to some clever use of narrow depth-of-field by d.p. Pollock, which makes Chinese bystanders almost invisible in their own city. From its portrayal of Taipei's "Little Philippines" quarter on Zhongshan North Road to the leads' own linguistic prison, Pinoy Sunday has the feel of two fish swimming around in an aquarium, with no way out to the sea. As a movie, its saving grace is that it's upbeat, easy on the eye, often very charming and free of any self-pity - a lesson in filmmaking that many native Taiwanese directors could learn from Ho.

The movie also exists in a version entirely dubbed into Hokkien (the native Chinese dialect in Taiwan) that was specially prepared by the director to qualify for Government Information Office (新聞局) subsidies. This version played alongside the original Tagalog version during the movie's release in Taiwan.