The Red Lotus Society

More cinematic but less sure-footed than Lai's first film The Peach-Blossom Land, this anatomy of the Chinese obsession with keys to 'secret knowledge' suggests that the whole city of Taipei has lost the plot. A young language tape salesman decides to find someone to teach him 'vaulting' - the art of achieving weightlessness, as described in countless martial arts movies and novels - and scours the city for three surviving masters from the legendary Red Lotus Society who are rumoured to be living ordinary lives under assumed identities. Very beautifully shot by Chris Doyle, but not persuasive enough as a vision of reality for the characters' superstitions and paranoias to seem justified.