Bundled

A Dodes'ka-den for the post-punk generation, Chen's remarkable debut presents itself as a series of interlocking dreams. It centres on drop-outs and misfits in Taipei, sleeping rough in abandoned buildings and under bridges, and the core of the film is her engagement with these variously frustrated and other-worldly outsiders. Two elements give it shape and structure. First, the quest by an insensitive TV journalist to track down a prizewinning writer who has turned his back on mainstream society. Second, the juxtaposition of the worlds of Ah Ming (Yen, a real-life homeless man) and a middle-class mother and daughter. Ah Ming finds a camcorder which replays images of the little girl's birthday party, and imagines that it shows his own long-lost family. Meanwhile, the girl on the tape imagines (or intuits?) the grandpa she never knew. Highly original and often magical.