Dance of the Possessed

The Taiwan film poster for SPLIT OF THE SPIRIT (1987)

Remember the 1984 comedy All of Me, directed by Carl Reiner? In that film, Lily Tomlin plays a dying heiress who plans to have her soul transferred into the body of a younger woman but something goes wrong in the process and she ends up inhabiting the body of an attorney (Steve Martin). Imagine a horror fantasy variation of that premise and you have Li Gui Chan Shen (English title: Split of the Spirit, 1987), a Taiwanese film from director Fred Tan.

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All the Youthful Days

A scene from Hsiao-Hsien Hou’s THE BOYS FROM FENGKUEI (1983).

For many young people, the time period immediately after their high school graduation is a crucial phase in which their lives could take many different paths depending on the decisions they make. This is especially true for those who don’t go to college and either go to work, are drafted into the military or hang out with friends before adult responsibilities consume their lives. Falling into the latter category is 1983’s The Boys of Fengkuei (The original Taiwanese title Feng gui lai de ren roughly translates as All the Youthful Days), an evocative coming-of-age drama from internationally renowned director Hsiao-Hsien Hou.

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