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Canwest News Service
Film Review: Parking (2.5 stars)
Seems that if you stop in one place long enough, the whole world will pass by. That's what happens to Chen Mo (Chen Chang of Crouching Tiger and next week's Red Cliff), who parks his car on a Taipei street in order to buy an apology cake for his wife. While he's inside the shop arguing about how much "energy" the cakes have, someone double-parks in front of his car, blocking him in.
What follows is a darkly comic series of misadventures. Chen goes to a nearby apartment to see if the car's owners are there, and is welcomed in by an elderly couple who think he's their long-lost son and the father of their granddaughter. Later, he accidentally sits on his pastries and has to use a barbershop restroom – but first he must remove a fish head from the sink. Then the one-armed barber challenges him to a game of foosball.
And on it goes, with Chen periodically phoning his wife to say he'll be later than he thought. His subcompact car seems to be a double-parking magnet, however; every time one vehicle leaves, another shows up before he can get away. He calls a towing company but all their trucks are busy. (Is Mother's Day a high-traffic time for car removal services?) He gets into a cab but the driver says his destination is too far away; he has somewhere else to be. "I'm so unlucky!" Chen whines.
Chen's character is annoyingly easygoing, at least in the early going. He is both mildly curious and curiously mild, and doesn't put up any fuss when the locals insist he's their son – in fact, he even goes back for a spot of dinner. Later, when things take a darker turn with gangsters and prostitutes thrown into the mix, Chen shows more backbone; almost too much, some might argue, given his earlier tolerance. Someone marvels: "I didn't know you were the type to come back and hit someone."
The saving grace in this film from first-time Taiwan writer, director and cinematographer Mong-Hong Chung is the characters' backstories, which are quickly and neatly sketched so that we know something of where they're coming from. They function as more than mere impediments to Chen getting back on the road, but as fellow travellers on the road of life. Who knows: Perhaps a better parking spot at some point in their pasts might have caused their lives to turn out very differently.
