10+10

The numbers in the title refer to directors: ten experienced Taiwanese old hands and ten up-and-comers. Each has made a five minute short reflecting some aspect of their country, and the results are compiled in a sprawling portmanteau movie. The result is inevitably patchy and restless: some shorts don’t work, while others reference aspects of Taiwanese history and culture which are liable to go over the heads of Western viewers. But there are some striking moments here: veteran filmmaker Chang Tso-chi makes a surprisingly succesful attempt to squeeze an epic war movie into a severely limited timeframe, while Shen Ko-Shang’s cautionary ‘Bus Odyssey’ is starkly powerful. The biggest name here is Hou Hsiao-Hsien, whose ‘La Belle Epoque’ is lush and empathetic. But the pick of the bunch has to be Chung Mong-Hong’s punch-to-the-throat ‘Reverberation’, a tale of high school bullying and revenge which does more in five minutes than some features manage in their entire running time.