The Cabbie

Vastly enjoyable, Chen's third feature (producer Chang is credited as co-director for legal reasons, apparently) could be cinema's answer to Tristram Shandy: the life/love-story of taxi driver Daquan (Chu) is interspersed with so many vignettes, digressions, direct-to-camera interruptions and flashbacks that it defies description, let alone synopsis. The first half mixes episodes from Daquan's personal history (how and why his coroner mother married his cabbie father, why he became a driver, why dad's office is located next to an accident black-spot) with reflections on the way people confide their darkest secrets to cabbies. The second half is mostly the love story: confirmed bachelor Daquan falls for policewoman Jingwen (Japanese star Miyazawa, well-dubbed into Chinese) and sets about committing every moving violation in the book as many times as it takes to catch her attention. Wise, worldly and put together with unfailing dark wit, this is an absolute joy.