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Celebrated Taiwanese director Edward Yang‘s penultimate feature is a deceptively simple and straightforward affair. “Mahjong” poses as an over-the-top, soap opera-esque tale full of petty criminals, blackmail, sentimental manipulation and unrequited love. But it also offers a bittersweet chronicle of life, love, greed and economic opportunism in the booming, bustling Taipei of the late 1990s.

Mahjong is screening at San Diego Asian Film Festival

The film follows a group of rowdy young men who share the same apartment while ripping off other people for a living – and almost, it seems, for a hobby. Their leader is Red Fish (Tsung Sheng Tang), an enterprising young hustler who sees the world as one huge scamming opportunity with only the capitalist sky for a limit. His father is a fugitive businessman and con man who has made a fortune out of Taiwan’s roaring economy, and Red Fish has assimilated to his...

Superb filmmaking! Edward Yang's chronicle of the children of Chinese exiles in Taiwan follows one teen's strange story of accidental delinquency, muted romance and pervasive violence in a closed society fed on American Rock 'n' Roll and Cold War militarism. Almost exactly as long as Gone With the Wind, Yang's intimate epic is one of those 'best movies ever' that few Americans have heard of. A Brighter Summer Day Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 804 1991 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 236 min. / Gu ling jie shao nian sha ren shi jian / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date March 22, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Chen Chang, Lisa Yang, Kuo-Chu Chang, Elaine Jin, Chuan Wang, Han Chang, Hsiu-Chiung Chiang, Stephanie Lai, Chi-tsan Wang, Lawrence Ko, Chih-Kang Tan, Ming-Hsin Chang, Chun-Lung Jung, Hui-Kuo Chou. Cinematography Hui Kung Chang, Longyu Zhang Film Editor Po-Wen Chen Written by Hung Hung, Mingtang Lai Produced by Wei-yen Yu Directed by Edward Yang

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