Asian Drama

Even in modern-day Taipei, women feel the societal pressure to get married and have children before the period to have them.

Thankfully, there is a solution: freeze your ovum and prolong your fertility.

Zeng Mei Bao freezes her ovum and looks for the right man to start a family. In the pursuit of this man, she ends up in a wintry Swedish Province, where ice and snow becomes a metaphor for the unborn child who is waiting to be born.

A Taiwanese film that effectively shows the beauty of Taiwan, Taiwan's official entry to the Academy Awards is definitely more worthy than its "substitute" status.  When looking back to the summer of 2007, Island Etude may be remembered as the directorial debut of famed cinematographer En Chen (who worked on Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien's classics City of Sadness and Good Men, Good Women), or as the highest-grossing Taiwanese film of the year. However, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution then came along and changed everything; not only did the espionage drama take over as Taiwan's highest-grossing Chinese film of the year, it got rejected by the Academy Awards for "not being Taiwanese enough", leaving Island Etude to become Taiwan's official entry to the 2008 Oscars. Despite its "substitute status", Island Etude is actually the perfect choice to represent the island nation: it's a beautifully-shot homage to the island's people, its sights, and the sport of bicycle riding that is thankfully free of any political views or pretentious art-house technique.First-time actor Tung Ming-Hsiang plays Ming, a young college student whose lifelong hearing problem causes him to communicate via slurred speech. Carrying a guitar on his back and lacking few concrete reasons, he decides to bike around the island of Taiwan by himself months before his college graduation...

Yi Yi is an epic story about the Taipei Jian family seen through three different perspectives: the middle-aged father NJ (Nien-Jen Wu), the young son Yang-Yang (Jonathan Chang), and the teenage daughter, Ting-Ting (Kelly Lee). The three-hour piece starts with a wedding, concludes with a funeral, and contemplates areas of human life in between. The father, NJ, is unsatisfied with his work and the desire of his business partners to enter into a deal with a well-known Japanese videogame company. While his partners are only concerned about making money, NJ finds that his honest nature is unappreciated in the commercial realm. To his surprise, he finds a connection with the Japanese software mogul, Ota. A former old flame, Sherry, tries to walk into his life after a chance reunion. His youngest son has troubles at school with his teachers, while his daughter has to handle a love triangle involving her friend next door and her troubled boyfriend. All three try to deal with their problems while also caring for NJ's aged mother-in-law, who is in a coma, and in the absence of NJ's wife, who has left for a Buddhist retreat after facing a midlife crisis. In addition, A-Di, NJ's overweight brother-in-law who marries a starlet at the start of the film, has to wrestle with his demanding wife and a former love, complicating matters within this extended family. The other Taiwanese cast members include Elaine Jin as NJ's wife, Min-Min, Su-Yun Ko as NJ's former love Sherry, Hsi-Sheng Chen as A-Di, and Pang Chang Yu as Fatty. The film also stars Japanese comedian Issei Ogata as a Japanese software mogul, Ota.