Showing: 26 November 2025
Edward Yang’s second feature is a mournful anatomy of a city caught between the past and the present. Chosen by our LUMI Programmers.
Made in collaboration with Yang’s fellow New Taiwan Cinema master Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taipei Story chronicles the growing estrangement between a washed-up baseball player (Hou, in a rare on-screen performance) working in his family’s textile business and his girlfriend (Tsai Chin), who clings to the upward mobility of her career in property development.
As the couple’s dreams of marriage and emigration begin to unravel, Yang’s gaze illuminates the precariousness of domestic life and the desperation of Taiwan’s globalised modernity.
Too Much: Melodrama on film is a UK-wide season, supported by BFI National Lottery funding, celebrating the vivid visual language, heightened dramatics and emotional pathos at the heart of film melodrama.