THREE MAKES A WHOLE

Closing Night Film, 2019 Golden Harvest Awards and Short Film Festival

Three female legends of Taiwan cinema make whole the latest work by director Zero Chou. In the 1970s and 80s, filmmaker Liu Li-li famously adapted numerous works by romance novelist Chiung Yao. Rather than simply following the biopic format, Chiung Yao, credited with the story of THREE MAKES A WHOLE, returns the favor, paying tribute to Liu with a tangled melodrama befitting the romances of youthful idealism that made them both famous.

We meet Liu as a young woman finding her narrative voice in the stage, and later film, while juggling romance with a married director. Rather than spinning into a sensationalist work of rival lovers and artists, the film makes room for a sneakily revolutionary co-existence and collaboration that is both an homage to and a revitalization of the love triangle format that made Chiung Yao and Liu Li-li famous.

Zero Chou (Spider Lillies, Drifting Flowers) preserves the soap opera theatrics of 1970s romantic sentimentalism, but infuses them with a queer sensibility that defiantly proclaims that three is sometimes better than two. 

–Brian Hu