Moon Fascinating, Bird Sweet
1978∣95min∣Color∣Narrative Feature∣Mandarin
When kindergarten teacher Ling-Shan befriends little girl Chu-Chu, she also meets her melancholy father, Peng-Fei. It hurts Ling-Shan to see Peng-Fei drown his sorrows after his wife abandoned him, and her sympathy slowly grows into love. One day, Ling-Shan stumbles upon Peng-Fei’s old dairy, and with every word she reads about Peng-Fei’s affection for his wife, jealousy grows. Things take a more unexpected turn when a stranger resembling Peng-Fei’s wife materializes in Ling-Shan’s life.
Moon Fascinating, Bird Sweet is a story by Chiung-Yao, whose popularity among film adaptations began with LI Hsing’s highly successful Four Loves (1965). In line with other Chiung-Yao films, this film fantasizes love among beautiful characters using poetic dialogue and catchy theme songs often lyricized by the novelist herself, reflecting the romantic fantasies of female laborers during Taiwan’s economic takeoff. By casting Brigitte LIN and her long-term collaborator Charlie CHIN, the film was further popularized by the actors’ real-life romances that were often intertwined with another Chiung-Yao star, CHIN Han, making each of them beloved by audiences for almost twenty years.
Director
CHEN Yao-Chi
Born in 1938, CHEN Yao-Chi graduated with a master’s degree in Film and Television from UCLA. His directorial debut, the documentary, LIU Pi-Chia (1965), received critical acclaim. During the 1970s, CHEN broke into the romantic genre along with director LI Hsing and PAI Ching-Jui, and has been active ever since in the fields of theater, film and television.
