Flat Tyre

A photographer noted for b/w landscapes grows obsessed with filming immobile subjects: the statues, most of them religious or political, which litter Taiwan. He treks around the island with his cynical cameraman, from mountain peaks to village squares, shooting representations of Buddha, Guanyin and Chiang Kai-Shek. Meanwhile the young woman fan who moved in with him starts working on a vacuous commercial movie as a location scout/actress and gets drawn into an abrasive sexual relationship with the lead actor. Taiwan's foremost indie film-maker uses a project with obvious roots in documentary to perform surgery on the island's damaged heart; few directors would see the link between a failing relationship and the motive for putting up a statue, and fewer would posit that link with such dream-like wit.