A Place of One's Own 一席之地

The movie is built around three alike stories, presented separately. Sooner or later, the characters of these tales meet, for the best or the worst or sometimes without even knowing how close they are in their everyday struggles.

The first story revolves around Muzi, an indie rock singer. After being caught for detention of illicit substances, he became less popular, while the last CD of his band received neither good nor bad critiques.

The title of Muzi's story "no applause, no booing, what the hell is going on?" reveals how the dramatic fall from his pedestal makes him in a way, lose his identity. Deep in debt, he is forced to move out, which is the ultimate loss of material comfort. In addition to his misery, his girlfriend Kassey is on top of the charts, and her success drives Muzi away from her.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the mountains, within close proximity to a cemetery, a family squats one land, which is believed to have an incredible fen-shui. Lin constructs gigantic origamis, colorful paper houses, in which human beings will live in their afterlife.

Passionate about his work, and a fierce believer in life after death, Lin has cancer and must find money for the surgery. In a prevision of his possible death, he undertakes the construction of a gigantic origami equal in beauty to the Taj Mahal palace.

Ironically, while Lin is building a death palace for himself, two brothers covet Lin's land to build the funeral graveyard of their not-yet-deceased father. While Lin seems to be trapped in his afterlife dream-house and refuses to sell the house, his wife and son both try to find a financial solution.

Also, Gang is a computer geek who resorts to selling virtual land to a friend while also leaving his former job to enter the real estate field. Dying to be successful, he yells several times, facing the quiet tombs: "I have to sell my first house!"

Yue, Gang's mother, is a very odd and touching character. She takes care of the tombs on behalf of the families, where she listens to the voices of the dead – one of them communicates to her a secret that could change her or others' lives.

When watching "A place of one's own", we are struck by the smoky atmosphere of Taipei's underground gigs; we are fascinated by the colors and the artisan's beauty of Lin's pieces of arts; we are touched by Yue's conversations by night in the cemetery.

The stories are all linked with a sense of being related to material belongings, the director and screenwriter Lou Yi-An, satirizes what still links the old and the new, the Confucius tradition and the engulfing city.

As if we were on top of the hill with Lin's family, we apprehend the pain of the characters, but also the delicate poetry instilled in the landscapes' plans. Being homeless is what frightens men the most, on earth, and in the sky.

The characters all leave a special print in our minds. Resourceful, often tenacious, but sometimes unlucky, the rich, just as the poor, are in the end confronted to loss, in all its various meanings. The loss of a father, of a lover, or of a house ... even if a paper house.

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