At last, a truly light movie in the Sydney Film Festival! Au Revoir, Taipei is obvious and insubstantial fun that provides quite a few good laughs.
Kai wants to go to visit his girlfriend in Paris, but he doesn't have any money. He consults local crime boss Brother Bao to get the money for the airfare, but Bao's henchmen want to get a cut of the job Kai has been given, and give chase to Kai and Susie, a bookstore worker.
Thus begins a crime farce that's essentially Taiwan's equivalent of Date Night.
Au Revoir, Taipei is a consistently funny film that never takes itself too seriously. There is no point at which the characters pull over and have a heartfelt talk about the state of their relationship ("you never give me a chance to help out!â€). Instead you have dancing exercises and nice night food market scenes.
There's not much more to it than that: there are perhaps more subplots than one might expect, but it's light and fun and entertaining. The ending is a great scene, too. If you judge a movie on "feelingâ€, then "happiness†is the result of watching Au Revoir, Taipei. Plus it's executive produced by Wim Wenders, of all people.
It's nice to have some fluff amongst all of the "worthy†films you get in a film festival.
