“Mrs. Chen”
“The beneficiary”
“Is not your son”
“What do you mean not my son”
“You shameless manstress”
“Let’s be clear here, you are being very impolite”
Dear Ex
There are three major characters in the film
A woman, who after her husband passes away
Finds out that he has altered his insurance policy
Cutting out their son
In favor of a stranger
And the new beneficiary
Is her husband’s lover
The thread of the story is the boy
He leads the story on
“So why did you take my father”
“I want Song Zhengyuan’s insurance money in three days”
“Or I tell your mother that her dearest son Jay”
“Is a shameless fag”
It won five awards at the Taipei Film Festival
And it got eight nominations at the Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards
I had a classmate who was our class monitor
Years after graduation, we happened to run into each other
And that time
She told me a true life story which really shocked me
She witnessed with her own eyes her husband cheating on her
And the other party was a man
“Pick up the phone, husband”
“Husband, pick up the phone”
“Who is the mistress”
“Are we clear now”
I couldn’t forget the way she told me the story
She went out of her way to stress how she was not upset at all
However, it was exactly when she was denying with all her strength her pathos
I felt the most sorry for her
I wanted to work out a character
Who lost the love of her husband
Or even her husband never loved her
And now she was about to lose her son
“So you marry dad just for his insurance money”
“Right”
“All I want is Song Zhengyuan’s savings”
“His house”
“I wait for him to die so I can get his insurance money”
“That’s why I married him in the first place”
“Money is all I care about”
When the crew received the script
None of them believed that it was a comedy
But they laughed from the first page to the last
Because Lu Shih-yuan is acclaimed for her ability
To temper deep and complex issues with a subtle sense of humor
The way she approaches the story
Frees the audience of their burdens
You don’t experience the pain and struggle
That you normally do when watching gay-themed films
You don’t feel like being swamped
Instead she makes it light
So you are able to stand in the shoes
Of these two rivals
It is fascinating
“Please take your son home and love him there”
“You think this is what I want”
“Having you poaching the two man in my life”
“I poached nobody”
“Right”
“Awesome”
I didn’t receive any investment from financial groups
The investors are my friends and relatives
They each invested about two million Taiwan dollars
A friend of mine, having heard that I’m making a film about gay
Sent me loads of materials for reference
There is a gay man’s wife group
They would share their hardship in the group
The sheer number of the group members is appalling
The younger ones
May choose to stay away from marriage
But gay friends of my generation
Their life is harder
Most of them still have to maintain a fake harmony with their family
While in fact everybody knows how it really is
They just put a permanent seal on it and avoid touching it
The whole story is trying to deliver one simple massage
When there is confrontation
Maybe we can stand in the rival’s shoes
And that is the start of mutual understanding
“Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that”
“I will beat you good”
“Don’t meddle with my stuff”
“That’s the book he was reading”