Slice of Taiwanese Life at Asian Pacific Film Fest

Among the many impressive offerings in the eighth annual Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival, which continues through Sunday, are a pair of powerful films from Taiwan dealing with disaffected youth.

Screening Saturday at UCLA’s Melnitz Theater are Tsai Ming-liang’s “Rebels of the Neon Gods” (7 p.m.) and Hsu Hsiao-ming’s “Dust of Angels” (9:30 p.m.). As representatives of the New Taiwanese Cinema, they are especially encouraging in light of the decidedly uncertain future of Hong Kong’s vital film industry.

“Rebels of the Neon Gods” takes us into the restless, bored lives of four young people living in Taipei. Ah-tze (Chen Chao-jung) and his best pal, Ah-bing (Jen Chang-bin), are petty criminals, jimmying pay phones and stealing from electronics stores, while Ah-tze’s pretty girlfriend, Ah-kwei (Wang Yu-wen), is stuck in a dead-end job as an ice-skating-rink attendant. Crossing paths with them is Hsiao-kang (Lee Kang-sheng), who has decided to drop out of his tutorial school where he has enrolled to cram for his college entrance exams.

Tsai plunges us into an utterly soulless Taipei of raw, garishly lit streets, cheap dives and hotels and vast video game arcades. (It’s in an arcade that Ah-tze pauses briefly before a James Dean poster; Tsai holds the moment just long enough.) He wisely makes no special pleadings for these four--indeed, it is very easy to sympathize with the rage of Hsiao-kang’s father, a hard-working cab driver, when he discovers that his son has become a dropout. Instead, Tsai simply lets us follow the quartet’s increasingly aimless and reckless path, allowing us to experience these young people’s overwhelming sense of futility.

As impressive as “Rebels of the Neon Gods” is, “Dust of Angels” is even more so in its complexity and ambitious scope. Both Hsu, here making his feature debut, and Hsai are directors of true vision, but Hsu’s seems to go broader and deeper; significantly, Hsu has been an assistant to Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Taiwan’s leading director, best known for “A City of Sadness.”

“Dust of Angels” also focuses on two pals headed for trouble, a pair of 17-year-olds (Jack Kao, Yan Chang-guo) who live in a small town where they unwittingly get caught between two underworld gangs, who have had a falling out over a double-cross involving smuggled arms.

Since there are so many people in such a web of relationships, “Dust of Angels” is consistently difficult to follow, yet it holds us with its richly nuanced images in which Hsu views his people from a non-judgmental middle distance. You may not always be able to follow “Dust of Angels,” but you can feel its impact.

Preceding this extraordinary double feature at 5 p.m. is Rico Martinez’s engaging documentary “Glamazon: A Different Kind of Girl,” an affectionate portrait of 60-plus stripper Barbara LeMay, born in Morgantown, W.Va., as Sammy Hoover. Martinez follows LeMay back to her hometown for her first visit in 30 years, where she is warmly embraced by relatives and old friends, including her teen-age girlfriend, to whom she gives an elaborate make-over--LeMay is a great believer in the miraculous powers of elaborate blond wigs and heavy makeup.

Totally self-enchanted, LeMay is a star and sexpot of the first magnitude in her own mind, yet is affectionate and caring of others, courageous and comfortable in the identity she chose long ago and given to outrageously earthy anecdotes of her colorful honky-tonk life.

It’s a good thing that LeMay is as appealing as she is because Martinez indulges in some arty but amateurish and time-wasting re-creations of some of her stories. “Glamazon” leaves us delighted to have made LeMay’s acquaintance but wanting to know much more about her.

The Asian Pacific festival concludes with Xie Fei’s “Xian Hunnu” (Melnitz, Sunday at 7 p.m.), a stunning feminist work from mainland China. Sigin Gaowa’s sturdy heroine, although unglamorous, brings to mind Joan Crawford’s “Mildred Pierce.”

In rural Northern China, the quality of her sesame oil is so fine that she attracts Japanese investors. Yet while successfully running her mill, she is burdened with a drunken, oafish husband (to whom she was sold at age 7 and whom she married at 13) and also with trying to marry off a sexually frustrated, mentally retarded grown son.

The point that Xie makes with the impact of revelation--and not an ounce of preachiness--is how oppressed women can be tempted into helping oppress yet another generation of women.

Information: (310) 206-FILM, (213) 680-4462.