This very mixed genre film combines comedy, policier and gay romance in a fun-to-watch unexpected submission for the Oscar from a country where some of the world’s great cinema has been created.
Taiwan cinema has always been committed to stories told from a Taiwanese perspective since its inception in 1901 to the 1950s and 1960s, genre films of the 1960s and 1970s, Taiwan New Cinema of the 1980s, and the Second New Wave of the 1990s whose films are slightly less serious and more popular with the people. Internationally known representative directors include King Hu, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, Tsai Ming-liang, Chang Tso Chi, Chung Mong-Hong, and Midi Zhao. Ang Lee is perhaps the most well-known of the Second New Wave directors. His early films Pushing Hands (1991), The Wedding Banquet (1993), and Eat Drink Man Woman (1994) focus on the generational and cultural conflicts confronting many modern families. He has had three films nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and one of these films, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, is the only Taiwanese film to have won the award.
His revived the wuxia genre successfully. Although not in the tradition of New Wave or Second New Wave, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) was a commercial success, revived the wuxia genre and placed Asian films firmly in the international domain. The later films Eternal Summer (2006), Prince of Tears (2009) and Winds of September (2009) have pushed the boundaries of Taiwanese film-making and broken the island’s long-standing taboos about the depiction of controversial subject matter.
Taiwan was the first country in Asia to legalize same sex marriage in 2019. The way LGBTQ themes are depicted here is heartwarming and original. Who says you cannot mix genres? Mixed in with a police story teaming a woman and a man vying for credit in solving crimes, it often convolutes into hilariously incongruous shenanigans. as they try to solve the mystery of the death of the foil of our protagonist.
Staying with the tradition of Taiwanese perspectives, this caper deals with a tradition called “ghost marriage” where a family tries to find their deceased daughter a groom because without a husband, she has no place on the traditional family altar honoring the family ancestors. They find a husband by placing her photo and a lock of her hair in a red envelope and laying it on the ground. If a man picks it up, expecting money, he will find he has just married the person. He is still free to marry a real-life woman but the deceased then has a place to rest upon the traditional family altar of the husband. Otherwise, she has no place and wanders the earth as a ghost.
In this story, the man finds the envelope, but the family is trying to marry off their son, Mao, who has recently passed away. And the ghost remains fully active until he convinces the man to go through with the marriage. The man is the homophobic policeman, Wu, who heavy-handled a homosexual suspect and was chided by his boss for his prejudice. His partner, the beautiful Tzu-Shing also berates Wu for his staunch homophobia. Wu spots Mao’s father, who tells his ‘son-in-law’ that he’s trying to look for clues about the car that ran over Mao. The video footage had been removed, according to the police, and Wu decided to look into the matter.
Thus the cop and ghost team up to search for clues, which leads to multiple hilarious situations, including Wu having to approach a suspect at a gay bar and being laid flat on his back. Coincidentally, this suspect, who’d witnessed the hit-and-run of Mao, was an underling of a drug lord, who was being investigated by Wu’s old precinct. Thus the “romance” and the policier go hand in glove
It is the filmmaker Wei-Hao Cheng’s fifth feature. Most of his films are crime, suspense or horror stories. In 2015, his short film, The Death of A Security Guard, won Best Short Film at 52th Golden Horse Awards. In 2016, his debut feature film The Tag-Along garnered four award nominations including Best Director. It also smashed box office records of horror movies in Taiwan for over ten years. In 2017, feature films Who Killed Cock Robin and The Tag-Along 2 were released and nominated for eight awards in 54th Golden Horse Award. In 2021, his film The Soul was nominated for 11 Golden Horse Awards including Best Director. His first series The Pond was selected in the 26th Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival. In 2023, this latest film Marry My Dead Body was released and ranked among the top ten highest-grossing films in Taiwan’s cinematic history. It won the Best Screenplay at the 25th Taipei Film Awards, and was nominated for the Best Narrative Feature, the Best Director and six other awards at the 60th Golden Horse Awards.
The film is currently available on Netflix.
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