Life Is Cheap... But Toilet Paper Is Expensive (1989) I didn't watch it, I just like saying the film title. (JK, I watched it)

This one slipped my radar, it's by the same director responsible for "Joy Luck Club" and "Chan Is Missing", Wayne Wang. What can I say about the film itself? Well, its been reworked, and the new 4k version is considered definitive, the existing theatrical cut retained only for archival purposes. The camera work is quite stunning, the subjects sharp and in total focus, perfectly toned and soft, dreamy even. In the redone version, it should be noted, there is a section mid-way through, containing several minutes of video footage shot on location, which is quite meta in some ways, given the nods Wang makes to the documentarian style of movie making.

The film was originally given a rating of X which drove its notoriety, but not its wide acceptance. The film contains several scenes of ducks being butchered, and its quite graphic. There are many "titillating perspectives", various acts of implied debauchery. It never rises to the same level of inverted sexuality that we would expect to see from American directors. No, the concepts of sex are delivered in a very off-hand, unmeshed way, impossible to confine or trap.

The film has a very interesting narrative structure whereby we see not the characters engaged in dialogue together. Rather they deliver their dialogue to the camera, and then the visual space is managed using different editing techniques. It is quite unique, I've never seen it done in any other film. To fans of Wes Anderson, the camera work should be very familiar, he would find it almost impossible to deny that Wang influenced his work, I would imagine. The symmetry in Andersons films, the sense of harmony and balance is found nearly two decades early in the works of Wang.

This movie is an exercise in abstract fragmentation. Yet the plot is fairly easy to follow, even though the relationships between the various characters are variously grouchy and intimate, and only being truly settled in the final act of the film. The characters play to the camera in an almost documentarian fashion, in one pastiche after another. This is only punctuated by various fantastic visions, of quite disturbing origin, limbs being severed, passed around for observation, this type of thing.

I admit it made me delighted.