(SEX) APPEAL-Secret of Summer that Cannot be Told

□By DEREK

An ambitious study of  how an unprovable teacher-student "rape" case fans out to affect the lives of various other people, (SEX) APPEAL  marks a feature-film debut by Taipei-born director Wang Wei-ming, who initially worked as an assistant director to the late Edward Yang in the early \'90s, followed by a decade making commercials and TV movies. With a strong Taiwan cast led by Vivian Hsu and Alyssa Chia as the opposing lawyers, and Amber Kuo and Leon Dai as the music student and her professor, the movie laudably aims to take the island\'s cinema beyond its current comfort zone of local comedies and dramas while remaining accessible to general audiences.

Based on a true case, the movie follows cute music student Pai Hui-hua, raised in Taipei by a single mother, as she goes to provincial Taitung University in the southeast of the island to take a master\'s degree. Falling under the spell of her charismaticmusic professor, she\'s apparently raped in his office one day and two months\' later attempts suicide. A student counsellor urges her to sue, and calls in an old lawyer friend from Taipei to take the case. But there\'s more here than meets the eye.

The script is not centred just on Hui-hua, and stirs in a whole host of other sub-plots. Thanks to the strong cast, and smooth production values, the film just about manages to do all this material justice, with the trial providing more character detail and revelations.

Actress-singer Kuo, 28, best known now for her bitchy fashionista in the Mainland TINY TIMES films, acquits herself well in her most challenging role to date as the conflicted Hui-hua. Hsu, now 39, also rises impressively to the part of the hard-nosed Taipei lawyer, both in her many scenes with Kuo and with TV drama actress Chia, 40, as the opposing lawyer. Chia\'s role is, in fact, one of the most interesting in the movie and could easily have been fleshed out with a few more scenes. Well cast as the libidinous professor, Dai pushes himself more here than in most other roles.

Technically, the film is top-drawer, led by ace d.p. Mark Lee\'s saturated images of rural Taiwan          and  a score by Annie Lo which brings a sense of architecture to the whole film.

图说
The still of (Sex) Appeal.