Help Me Eros
| Help Me, Eros | |
|---|---|
Homegreen Films poster for Help Me, Eros
|
|
| Directed by | Lee Kang-sheng |
| Produced by |
Tsai Ming-liang Vincent Wang |
| Written by | Lee Kang-sheng |
| Starring |
Lee Kang-sheng Jane Liao Dennis Nieh Ivy Yin |
| Music by | Yasuda Fumio |
| Cinematography | Pen-jung Liao |
| Edited by | Chen-Ching Lei |
| Distributed by | Homegreen Films |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
120 minutes |
| Country | Taiwan |
| Language | Mandarin |
Help Me, Eros (Chinese: 幫幫我，愛神) is the second film from director Lee Kang-sheng, following his directorial debut in 2003, The Missing.
The film centers on the lives of three socially isolated characters – the newly unemployed Ah Jie (Lee Kang Sheg), the call center counsellor he depends on for support, Chyi (Jane Liao or Hui-Jen Liao), and, Shin (Yin Shin or Ivy Yin or Ivy Yi), one of the team of provocatively dressed girls employed in selling betel nuts and cigarettes to passing customers at a street kiosk below his apartment.
The literal translation of the Taiwanese title is 'Help Me, God of Love', since Eros is an artifact of Greece-Roman mythology. The exclamation is a wry reference to the film's comically cynical perspective on human relationships, in which a wide variety of unlikely subjects – food, marijuana and live eels, amongst others – become substitute objects of comfort and affection for the protagonists. The plea for help is also a strong theme in the form of the suicide hotline.
The film is set in modern Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The infamous opening sequence depicts the protagonist lying on the designer sofa in his apartment watching a cookery segment on his TV, in which a carp is swiftly scaled, gutted, cooked and served alive, its mouth still slowly opening and closing.
Jie ambles around his almost bare apartment, cooking instant noodles, tending his treasured marijuana plants in their closet nursery and explaining his problems to counsellor Chyi on the suicide hotline. A former stockbroker, recently fired, he resorts to selling off his remaining designer furniture at a nearby pawn shop to maintain his paltry existence.
Chyi, the counsellor he compulsively requests from the hotline call center, is a young but overweight woman. Jie pleads with her over the line for more satisfying contact, but she is reluctant to accede. Jie fantasises about Chyi, idealising her as beautiful girl in a revealing novelty outfit pleasuring herself to the sound of his voice and exhaling the marijuana smoke he breathes onto the telephone handset. When she leaves work for her marital home she finds her husband in a frenzy of activity, preparing her an enormous gourmet meal. She eats alone whilst he watches TV with his conspicuously attractive friend, who he informs her will be staying with them for a while. He fills the bathtub with live eels whilst she sits watching in her underwear. She attempts to manoeuvre her husband into sex, but he flinches away from her touch. Left alone in the bathroom, Chyi playfully pushes them around with her toes. Later in the evening, as she walks past the two of them playing pool on her way to the kitchen for a tub of ice cream, the camera pans to reveal that both men are naked from the waist down.
...
Wikipedia