Yonfan, who is known as an aestheticist director. After "Color Blossoms" (2004) interprets Hong Kong's exotic colors with its "porn fans", he returned to Taiwan where he grew up as a teenager, and described the military village specially set up for soldiers and their families in the 1950s during the period of white terror, "Prince of Tears" adapted from a true story. The story describes a pair of sisters studying in a military village primary school, living a happy life with their handsome air force father and beautiful mother. However, when the father entered the enemy's territory in order to save his daughter in the Mainland, he was convicted of collaborating with the enemy, and the mother was also implicated, which exposed the fact that the sister was not born to the mother. This true story is the story of Chiao Chiao, an actress who has a cameo role in the film. Her mother has been unable to forgive her sister's "exhausted husband" because of this. When Yonfan learned about this story, he began to conceive "Prince of Tears".
The "Prince of Tears" comic that appeared in the film is actually a "prop" created by Yonfan, but this story similar to "The Little Prince" runs through the entire movie. The character "Prince of Tears" can basically refer to every character. That kind of romance and sadness, just as Yonfan said in the production special that he wanted the film to be more sorrowful than tragic, and "Prince of Tears" and two other Taiwanese directors Hou Hsiao-Hsien's "A City of Sadness" (1989) and Edward Yang Dechang's "A Brighter Summer Day" (1991), in which the background of the characters described in "A Brighter Summer Day" is closer to "Prince of Tears", and "A Brighter Summer Day" is a work full of tragic, on the other hand, Yonfan interprets the history of this dark period in Taiwan with a kind of nostalgia for his childhood. From the point of view of the two little sisters, from innocence and romance to the helplessness after being crushed, especially when Zhu Xuan, who plays the mother Ping, is going to marry Ding Keqiang (played by Wing Fan), who denounced their father Sun Hansheng (played by Chang Hsiao-Chuan), the eldest daughter felt extremely sad and talked to her mother. In the end, the mother made a helpless and appropriate decision as an ordinary woman for life and their future. The mother and daughter cried together.
In order to recreate the feeling of a military village in his youth, Yonfan recreated many details of his life back then, and he has many collective memories for that generation, and it is rare for him to face this history frankly; although he said that he encountered a lot of obstacles during the conception period. Some people think that he is uncovering the scars of Taiwan, but his method is different from Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang. With his personal experience and his unique and keen sense of touch, he interprets the style of the military village in those days enriched the film and became the most textured film in Yonfan's films. Even at the beginning of the story, the teacher Qiu (played by Lin Yo-Wei), who has the director's self-discipline, is not as abrupt and deliberate as his previous films. As for the most inexplicable part of the general audience is the ending. The dead Sun Hansheng returns to the home of the military village to find Ping. The handling of the suspected illusion is to explain the mystery of the heterochromatic love between Ping and the general's wife Quyang Qianjun (played by Terri Kwan), and to show the intricate emotional relationship between the four protagonists.
By Kam Po LAM (original in Chinese)
The "Prince of Tears" comic that appeared in the film is actually a "prop" created by Yonfan, but this story similar to "The Little Prince" runs through the entire movie. The character "Prince of Tears" can basically refer to every character. That kind of romance and sadness, just as Yonfan said in the production special that he wanted the film to be more sorrowful than tragic, and "Prince of Tears" and two other Taiwanese directors Hou Hsiao-Hsien's "A City of Sadness" (1989) and Edward Yang Dechang's "A Brighter Summer Day" (1991), in which the background of the characters described in "A Brighter Summer Day" is closer to "Prince of Tears", and "A Brighter Summer Day" is a work full of tragic, on the other hand, Yonfan interprets the history of this dark period in Taiwan with a kind of nostalgia for his childhood. From the point of view of the two little sisters, from innocence and romance to the helplessness after being crushed, especially when Zhu Xuan, who plays the mother Ping, is going to marry Ding Keqiang (played by Wing Fan), who denounced their father Sun Hansheng (played by Chang Hsiao-Chuan), the eldest daughter felt extremely sad and talked to her mother. In the end, the mother made a helpless and appropriate decision as an ordinary woman for life and their future. The mother and daughter cried together.
In order to recreate the feeling of a military village in his youth, Yonfan recreated many details of his life back then, and he has many collective memories for that generation, and it is rare for him to face this history frankly; although he said that he encountered a lot of obstacles during the conception period. Some people think that he is uncovering the scars of Taiwan, but his method is different from Hou Hsiao-Hsien and Edward Yang. With his personal experience and his unique and keen sense of touch, he interprets the style of the military village in those days enriched the film and became the most textured film in Yonfan's films. Even at the beginning of the story, the teacher Qiu (played by Lin Yo-Wei), who has the director's self-discipline, is not as abrupt and deliberate as his previous films. As for the most inexplicable part of the general audience is the ending. The dead Sun Hansheng returns to the home of the military village to find Ping. The handling of the suspected illusion is to explain the mystery of the heterochromatic love between Ping and the general's wife Quyang Qianjun (played by Terri Kwan), and to show the intricate emotional relationship between the four protagonists.
By Kam Po LAM (original in Chinese)
