After disappearing from the film scene for 16 years following
Tropical Fish (熱帶魚) and Love Go Go (愛情來了), director Chen Yu-hsun (陳玉勳)
returns with Zone Pro Site (總舖師), a comedy centered on bandoh (辦桌, lit:
setting up table), the traditional Taiwanese outdoor banquet typically
held at special events such as weddings, festivals and babies’
one-month-old celebrations.
With an ample budget of NT$70 million
and seven investors including Warner Bros, Chen Yu-hsun’s comedy has the
look of a summer blockbuster with an A-list cast of actors, sleek
production values and abundant supply of good-natured humor. But what
makes the film stand out is its attention to the emotional side of the
story, which revolves around the art of the Taiwanese banquet catering.
A
long time ago, there were three bandoh master chefs whose names alone
evoke awe. However, as times changed, the tradition of banquet catering
gradually waned, and the chefs who catered them quietly faded away. On
his deathbed, Master Fly Spirit — a master chef played by renowned
director Ko Yi-cheng (柯一正) — passed on the family recipes to his
daughter Wan (Kimi Hsia, 夏于喬), who desperately wants to escape the
catering business. Young and sassy, Wan tries her luck at modeling in
Taipei, to little avail.
The ill-fated model soon finds herself on
the run from two debt collectors, amusingly played by Chen Chu-sheng
(陳竹昇) and Chen Wan-hao (陳萬號), who hold Wan responsible for her
boyfriend’s huge debt. Disillusioned, Wan returns home to Tainan and
discovers that the family business has been reduced to a noodle stand
after her mother Ai-fong (Lin Mei-hsiu, 林美秀) loses a bid for a big
outdoor banquet, and subsequently sinks into debt.
The mother and daughter get a break when a former customer asks them
to cook up a table of old bandoh dishes that have long fallen into
oblivion. As luck would have it, Hai (Yo Yang, 楊祐寧), a self-proclaimed
food doctor who turns unsavory food into delicacies, comes to their
rescue. As they learn to recreate the traditional menu, love buds
between the two young cooks. Hai, however, disappears one day after a
quarrel with Wan.
Meanwhile, with a partially completed menu of
traditional bandoh fare, the mother and daughter decide to enter a
national bandoh competition to pay off their debts. Facing competition
from Master Ghost Head (King Jieh-wen, 喜翔), a master chef recently
released from prison, and Hai, the chef’s favorite protege, Wan takes up
the challenge and discovers the true spirit of bandoh.
A
boisterous melange of influences and ideas, the film fluently dabbles in
different territories but is never too outstretched that it falls
apart. The three master chefs, their legendary prowess and the different
paths they choose while searching for the meaning of bandoh, read like a
synopsis for a promising martial-arts flick. Crossing over to the realm
of Japanese manga, the film playfully features sequences of manga-style
hyperbole: An old man recalls youthful puppy love after eating fried
rice noodles; another dish is so tasty that it literally blows the
assembled gastronomes into outer space. Not to be outdone, a team of
zhainan (宅男) — a term that refers to homebound nerdy guys immersed in
comics, cartoons, computers and online games — always come to offer
assistance to the young heroine the moment she needs help.
The most fantastic setting in the movie is underground, where Master
Silly Mortal — the most elusive master chef played by cultural
glitterati Wu Nien-chen (吳念真) — dwells and cooks for outcasts and
vagabonds. It is one of the rare moments in Taiwanese cinema that make
good use of Taipei’s subterranean labyrinth of interconnected subway
stations, railways and tunnels. The result is a well-crafted fantasy
world where large underground murals portray the history and custom of
bandoh.
As the delightfully messy script requires, the film
enlists a large troop of characters and cameo roles by some of Taiwan’s
most distinctive talents. Leading man Yang enchants with his deadpan
comic delivery, owing much to his character’s funky accent, which is
ingeniously designed to tone down the actor’s good looks. Comedian Lin
invests a healthy dose of sprightliness and vigor to her role as the
loudmouthed, artless mother, supported by the more farcical humor
properly handled by veteran actors Chen Chu-sheng and Chen Wan-hao as
the two debt collectors-turned-little helpers.
Despite a large
cast of new actors and veterans, performances are surprisingly even;
every role is given a moment to shine. Even veteran thespian King’s
supposed sinister Master Ghost Head is a fun character, apparently
hailing from the disco era with his bell-bottom pants, greasy hair and a
theme song by Mando-pop legend Liu Wen-zheng (劉文正), who thrived during
the 1970s and 1980s.
But Chen Yu-hsun knows well that humor and
whimsical characters alone can’t touch the heart. Amid constant glee,
the film nevertheless clings to grassroots emotions and the central
motif which is embodied in Wu’s Master Silly Mortal, who believes that
bandoh is never about making money or procuring fame but about giving
everybody a chance to contribute and connect with each other. Mutual
understanding and reconciliation between characters are reached in the
grand finale, without which the climax-reaching bandoh competition would
merely be an empty spectacle. Ultimately, Zone Pro Site proves that
Chen Yu-hsun is a director worth waiting for.
