Even 400 years after the death of William Shakespeare, his work still lives on. Not only are his plays still performed all around the world, but they also inspire artists to make their own versions. This is the case with Chen Hung-i and Muni Wei's latest film “As We Like It”, for which they adapted the homonymous work, one of the bard's pastoral comedies. The result of their first collaboration as co-directors is a bustling, bright film about love that had its world premiere at the International Film Festival Rotterdam.
“As We Like It” is screening at Chinese Visual Festival
“As You Like It” highlights the simple country life versus the complexity and stressfulness of cities and towns. At the same time, it tells the story of a power struggle at the court, but above all the play is a love story involving not one but four happy couples. Add to that a gender switch as a plot twist where one of the main characters, Rose, goes undercover as a man and you have the recipe for one of Shakespeare's most frequently performed comedies. Chen Hung-i and Muni Wei keep these themes for their version but transport the story to the near future and adapt it to fit to our modern times.
One of the things that stand out from the start is the all-women cast. When the play was performed in Shakespeare's time all rolls where performed by men, but Chen Hung-i and Muni Wei decided to turn the tables. This is not a weird decision when taking into account that Muni Wei founded Shakespeare's Wild Sisters Group, an avant-garde theatre company. It owes its name to Shakespeare's fictional sister Judith, a character in Virginia Woolf's essay, “A Room of One's Own”, who meant to liberate women's talents from the oppression of patriarchy.
The casting choices and the play on gender raise expectations about the importance of gender in the movie. However, apart from some discussion about Orlando's feelings for the, as male disguised, Rose, there is not a lot of (explicit) attention to this subject. “As We Like It” is above all a film about love in every sense of the word, celebrating it in all its forms and guises. As such it can be seen as an homage to Taiwan's legalisation of same-sex marriage on 17 May 2019.
The forest of Arden, the ideal world where most of the action in “As You Like It” takes place, has been transformed into a wifi-free version of Ximending, a district in Taipei. Chen Hung-i and Muni Wei advocate for a utopia where our lives are no longer dominated by our phone and our constant urge for connectivity. In this modern Arden, people have developed offline alternatives for messaging. Also, there is a returned interest in crafts, traditions and spirituality.
The overall visual style of “As We Like It” is quirky, colorful and fun and reminds us of manga, music clips and video games. These references are reinforced by adding animation to the life-action shots. The animations are made by different artists and as a result have different styles. 2D animation enhances scenes by adding reactions, emotions, special effects, much like in manga and anime. Others serve as an animated frame to make scenes look like a video game, and 3D animation is used to show us paradisaical landscapes. This abundant style serves the joyous atmosphere of the film, but at the same time feels to contrast with the idea of slow living. This theme is better reflected in the scenes set in a secret garden where people practice calligraphy and fold well-wishings into almost magical objects. They have a sober and meditative quality and together with the much more darker scenes set outside Arden/Ximending they make the colourful scenes shine even more.
The choice of music further heightens the vivacious atmosphere of the film. The soundtrack is a diverse mix of well-known pop songs, such as “My Girl”, classical music with Vivaldi's “Spring” and an old Taiwanese-language song “Young Mountain”, used to celebrate free love in an oppressive society. Next to these tunes there is room for an original theme song, that uses the famous monologue “All the world's a stage” as inspiration for the lyrics.
“As We Like It” is Muni Wei's directorial debut, having worked as a theatre and opera director and producer on previous projects by Chen Hung-i. With “As We Like It” they bring us a vivacious film, celebrating love and honouring Shakespeare whose work withstands the test of time.
