Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing
| Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing | |
|---|---|
 DVD cover | |
| Traditional Chinese | 搭錯車 |
| Simplified Chinese | 搭错车 |
| Hanyu Pinyin | Dā Cuò Chē |
| Directed by | Yu Kanping |
Release date |
|
Running time | 89 minutes |
| Country | Taiwan |
| Languages | Mandarin Taiwanese Hokkien |
Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing (Chinese: 搭錯車) is a 1983 Taiwanese musical film directed by Yu Kanping (虞戡平) starring Sun Yueh and Linda Liu (劉瑞琪).[1] This film was released eight times in Taiwan and eleven times in Hong Kong and won four Golden Horse Awards.[2] The theme song "Any Empty Wine Bottles for Sale"[3] (Chinese: 酒矸倘賣無) performed by Su Rui is also famous.
Da Cuo Cue (搭错车) (2005) is a popular 22 episodes TV series produced in Mainland China rewriting the film plot starring Li Xuejian (李雪健) and Li Lin (李琳).[4]
Plot
[edit]A speech-impaired army veteran works as a bottle collector and lives in a shanty ghetto with a woman who depends on him to bring back a bottle of saki every evening. One morning, on a collection trip, he chances upon an abandoned baby girl in a basket with a note that says "Please give baby Mei a good home." He brings Mei home to raise as his own.
However, his companion is visibly upset with the presence of Mei and the attention he lavishes on her. The next evening, he decides to buy a can of powdered condensed milk for Mei at the expense of the saki. Upon reaching home, his companion bruises his eye. The next evening he brings home a bottle of saki but his companion had left him and Mei with a neighbor.
The man dotes on her and the neighbors also protect and love her. Mei eventually grows up into a beautiful young woman. She meets a singer-songwriter and they traverse the bar scene as a singing couple. They are talent-spotted by a record producer-manager looking for new talent. However, the record producer only wants Mei, not her boyfriend.
Mei signs a contract with the producer as her manager. Her manager reinvents Mei's image by masking her native and Taiwanese Hokkien linguistic origins, portraying her as the daughter of a rich and respectable family that has since emigrated to the United States, with Mei deciding to stay behind to pursue her singing career. Mei's popularity explodes while her boyfriend languishes along with her father and friends. Her neighbors are upset that she has abandoned her father for fame and fortune. When she returns, her neighbors and dad show up at a publicity party her manager threw for her, where the manager denies her relationship with her father. Mei shuns her father and friends.
One evening, Mei attempts to visit her father without knowing that her ghetto was forcibly demolished by city authorities and where they relocated to. Coincidentally, his father's former companion arrives and ask her about the whereabouts of a friend she has missed for twenty years. However, Mei and her father's former girlfriend are unaware of their connection.
Her father grows depressed and reflects on his years raising Mei. He collapses from depression and hypertension while watching her concert on TV with his neighbours. He is brought to the hospital dying and his widowed neighbour, with whom he has grown intimate, rushes to the concert to get Mei's attention. Mei reaches the hospital too late and breaks down in tears. Afterwards, she decides to sing a song about her father entitled "Any empty bottles for sale?", which her father used to shout in his native Hokkien during his collecting runs.
Social-political backdrop of the plot
[edit]The movie was released in 1983 amidst rejuvenated Taiwanese nationalist sentiment and the gradual liberalisation of Taiwanese media from the strangle hold of the mainland-Chinese dominated authoritarian government. During this period, there was renewed tensions between the local-born populace and migrants from mainland China.[5][6][7] The inclusion of the local dialect, Taiwanese Hokkien, was considered especially poignant as it had been banned by the government since the 1960s.[8] It also depicts, for the first time in Taiwanese cinema, the controversial process of rapid urbanization through demolition-and-relocation.[9]
Awards and nominations
[edit]| List of Accolades | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Award / Film Festival | Category | Recipient(s) | Result |
| 20th Golden Horse Awards | Best Actor | Sun Yueh | Won |
| Best Original Film Score | Chih-Yuan Chen
Shou-Chuan Lee |
Won | |
| Best Sound Recording | Fu-Kuo Kao | Won | |
| Best Original Film Song | Shou-Chuan Lee | Won | |
| 3rd Hong Kong Film Awards | Best Original Film Score | Chih-Yuan Chen
Shou-Chuan Lee |
Won |
| Best Original Film Song | Song: "Jau Gon Tong Maai Mo" ('Any Empty Wine Bottles to Sell?')
Composer/Lyrics: Hau Tak-Kin
|
Won | |
References
[edit]- ^ "Ride the Wrong Car". Archived from the original on 2010-10-13. Retrieved 2009-03-15.
- ^ * 排行榜- 最反复：《搭错车》之多次重映[permanent dead link]
- ^ Tan, Theresa (26 August 2014). "Concert review: Jenny Tseng says her late husband lives on in her memory". The Straits Times. Retrieved 7 June 2017.
- ^ 李雪健高希希王远峰“金三角”打造《搭错车》
- ^
Wei Yun (2004-03-20). "Who's the 'real' Taiwanese". Asia Times Online. Archived from the original on 2004-03-27.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ RONE TEMPEST (1995-12-19). "Taiwan's Native-Son President Epitomizes Power Shift on Island - Asia: Lee Teng-hui appears to have a lock on nation's first direct vote for its leader. The mainland elite are in decline". LA Times.
- ^ J. DeChicchis (1995). "The politics of language names in Taiwan". Studies in Language and Culture.
- ^ "Speaking the tricky language of elections in Taiwan". Reuters. 2011-10-20.
- ^ Yomi Braester (2010). Painting the City Red: Chinese Cinema and the Urban Contract. pp. 195–200. ISBN 978-0822347231.