Article #477

This schmaltzy film about a choir of inmates might make you cry – but in exasperation, frustration and disbelief rather than heartfelt emotion

Everyone involved with this feelgood/feelbad prison musical/weepie, and Taiwan’s biggest local box office hit ever, should be put on immediate cinematic probation and banned from film-making until it’s clear they are no longer a danger to the public. Starting out as merely heavy schmaltz, it resorts to increasingly manipulative tactics to wring out every drop of available emotion from the audience, like some merciless warden during exercise hour. There’s so much theatrical crying in the final stages that the inmates could have floated over the prison walls on the rising tide of their own tears.

In a story adapted from 2010 Korean film Harmony, Hui-Zhen (Ivy Chen) has to raise her infant daughter Yun-shi behind bars after murdering her abusive husband. Either this is movie jail or Taiwanese correction facilities are ridiculously plush, as her cell comes with soft-play fittings and supportive cellmates, including former stage diva Yu-ying (veteran singer Judy Ongg, who appeared in Peter Greenaway’s The Pillow Book). Already under pressure from hardass warden Chief Fang (Miao Ke-li) to give up Yun-shi for adoption, Hui-Zhen’s hand is forced when the youngster develops a vision-threatening cataract she can’t afford to treat.