Prison Vibes
Hoary, Clichéd and ludicrous… sweet, sunny and perfect. Dealer’s choice.
Sunshine Women’s Choir
Director: Gavin Lin • Writer: Hermes Lu
Starring: Ivy Chen, Judy Ongg, Chung Hsin-ling, Ho Man-xi, Annie Chen, Sun Shu-mei, Miao Ke-li
Taiwan • 2hrs 14mins
Opens Hong Kong March 5 • IIA
Grade: C
Wow, movie-goers are always surprising aren’t they? Guessing what’s going to hit a nerve isn’t the algorithmic science Amazon and Marvel think it is. I say that because I want to be clear on something. “Good” or “bad”, anyone who enjoys a weepy, treacly, ludicrous, clichéd heaping of sentimental slop should embrace it. And that’s not even being shady. You would suffer heart palpitations knowing what’s on my list of personal favourites (Streets of Fire is an all-timer, and you haven’t lived until you’ve seen Starcrash – fight me!). On many, many levels Taiwan’s newly crowned box office champion Sunshine Women’s Choir | 陽光女子合唱團 is really not “good”, but good, and what we like, are independent concepts and it’s a minor miracle when they go together. Here’s another one: Hypnotic. Yowza, but I’ll watch it every time it’s on the plane. Which leads me to Sunshine Women’s Choir, the highest-grossing local film ever in Taiwan, creeping up on NT$600 million (HK$147 million) and dethroning the previous record-holder Cape No. 7.
Director Gavin Lin Hsiao-chen and regular partner in crime, writer Hermes Lu An-hsien (the duo remade Won Tae-yeon’s More than Blue) have foisted a Redemptive Power Of Music movie on us, about a woman raising her daughter in prison (!) and the literally murderous inmates who band together to help before sending her into the world with a joyous memory of the cell block. WTF? It’s based on Kang Dae-kyu’s 2010 film Harmony (buddy, get an idea) and Lin rolled in (allegedly) true stories to round out the plot, creating this unwieldy fantasy that puts a warm, sunny face on mass incarceration and women who kill. But that’s the thing. If you want a little sunniness as the Fanta Fascist and Teenage Mutant Ninja Goebbels (©Daily Zeitgeist) bomb schoolgirls in Iran, who can blame you? Doesn’t make Sunshine less sloppy but it does make it the escape from this shitshow it aims to be.
Is that a hotel?
Deep breath: Hui-zhen (Ivy Chen Yi-han) shares a prison cell with four women who make up her posse, among them the jovial scam artist Pei-ying (Sun Shu-mei), the posse’s short tempered muscle Xiu-lan (Amber An Xin-ya) and the wise elder who coughs blood into a tissue (uh oh), Yang Yu-ying (Judy Ongg/Weng Qian-yu), once a massive pop star. Into this mix comes fresh meat in the form of obviously troubled young offender You-xin (Ho Man-xi) and Hui-zhen’s newborn infant, which she pops out in the prison infirmary. The warden, Chief Fang (Miao Ke-li) has let her keep this baby in the cell, and kindly guard Chen Yu-wen (Annie Chen Ting-ni) drops in to help out along with the other roommates. What the hell?
Anyway, when it turns out Hui-zhen’s daughter Yun-shi has a degenerative eye disease, a medical expense the prison won’t cover (ya think?) Hui-zhen demands the annual talent show be a full prison choir, established specifically to perform a farewell concert for this kid ahead of her adoption at three years old. After a dance-off (why?), yard thug Wang Mei-li (comedian Chung Hsin-ling) and her right hand Nikki (7LING/Chen Zi-ling) concedes and brings her posse of altos and sopranos to the table. Some pushing and shoving by the trash bins and some pushing and shoving in the mess hall – and a pitiful night in solitary – earn the rambunctious You-xin a place in everyone’s hearts and the Sunshine Women’s Choir is born. Despite the sorrow it causes her, Yu-ying agrees to conduct the unconventional choir to glory in a public performance (what, now?). All this is sandwiched between a glimpse of Yun-shi, now Zi-qing (Luo Chen-en), preparing to take the stage at a singing contest on her birthday.
It’s not Sunshine’s fanciful story that’s so objectionable; I enjoyed the other treacly Korean comedy about kids in jail, Lee Hwan-kyung’s Miracle in Cell No. 7 (maybe it was the miscarriage of justice sub-plot that made it work for me), but that film also struck a fine balance between “Ridiculous and I’m good with it,” and “Ridiculous and you’re taking me out of this movie.” Sunshine is too often the latter. It’s cursed with hackneyed jokes (fat chicks dancing are hilarious) and hoary tropes, a painfully rosy view of correctional systems (Yu-weng and Chief Fang are 100% fictions) zero examination of a world that makes women resort to murder to escape abuse, and not a single shower room shanking. No, Lin didn’t set out to make a documentary, but there’s a limit to how much he and Lu can separate these women from any kind of environmental context for the sake of uplifting comedy – and it seems they hit it.
As the story unfolds we get the grim backstories for the major players, but the narrative remains focused on the strengths of found family, forgiveness and community – props for a stealthily added same-sex couple adopting Yun-shi – and even finds space for a very, very, very delicate comment on societal resistance to reintegration of ex-cons. None of that forgives Sunshine Women’s Choir’s structural clangs, but it’s unabashed sweetness, optimism and characters that ultimately appeal to their better angels should be commended, as should Lin and Lu for their resolute positivity when the opposite sells more tickets and gets more likes. I’m still watching Streets of Fire instead, but if you know this is your jam, you know it.