Fridae

Hsiao Ya-chuan used to be known as Taiwanese maestro Hou Hsiao Hsien’s assistant director. That is, until he made a film on his own in 2000 called Mirror Image, which won festival circuit praise. For his sophomore effort (again executive produced by Hou), Hsiao delivers a stylishly filmed quirky comedy told with a whimsical voice-over narration that could very well be based on Freakanomics.

While Levitt and Dubner applied the dismal science to explain the weirder side of life, Taipei Exchanges drops in episodically on a winsome pair of sisters, from whose efforts to run their new café venture the audience will learn the foundations of economics, the meaning of life, and everything that matters. Which of course come with cute animated illustrations.

When the film opens, an accident before the opening of their café saddles the sisterly duo with a truckload of lilies, which over the course of the film are bartered and exchanges for a dazzling array of impractical knick-knacks, practical services and whimsical payments in kind – including a cycle of 35 short stories which are referenced in the film’s title.

Will they barter their way to making the café a success? Will they be able to land up with their hearts’ true desires? Will their naggy mother be proud of them? Hsiao keeps these big questions way in the background for much of the film’s duration. Customers walk in and out of the café offering to trade one quirky item for another quirky item. The duo’s amusing mother alternates between nagging and offering pragmatic life advice in various locations. And for some reason, random passers-by in Taipei get to chime in on what really matters to them in street interviews.

Hsiao’s script displays a fascination with the human foundations of barter trade, of putting a human value to inanimate things and actions, and to the stories that people exchange with one another. “What is this worth?” and “Is this story even true?” turn out to be the wrong questions to ask. For a film with such an ambitious subject, it’s a wonder that Taipei Exchanges feels laid back, short, and charmingly quirky.