I’ve got to admit that, while I find it difficult to enjoy the works of Tsai Min Liang and his protégé Lee Kang-sheng, something about them still draws me to their movies. Perhaps it is a determined attempt to try and cut through the
usual droning themes of alienation and loneliness, to discover if I could connect to anything else in the movie. I thought I’d find something here, but unfortunately Help Me Eros degenerates into something quite messy midway through, before redemption in the finale affords some relief.
Lee himself plays Ah Jie who, during a bear market, is reduced to being a pauper, his home and car impounded by the authorities. Does it deter him? Of course not – he goes back to the pound to recover his vehicle and continues to ignore the seal outside his apartment. He sells his belongings in an effort to try and raise what little cash he can and, in his idle time, tends homegrown marijuana plants, which he smokes to escape the hardships of life.
He befriends plenty of betel-nut beauties (one played by Yin Shin as Shin), and stalks one he thinks is Chyi, a lady he got to know from calls to a sex-chat hotline, allowing him to fantasize about the hot chick with the hot voice. Help Me Eros, however, plays the line that the hot voice on the other end of the phone line does not necessarily belong to a body one would (admittedly shallowly) label ‘hot’. The betel-nut beauties on the other hand, following the mantra ‘the skimpier the clothing, the better the patronage’, are more true to imagination, and in various states of undress entice one to stop by and part with one’s packet of cigarettes or share their equivalent of gum.
But this is not just a story about Ah Jie. The real Chyi (Jane Liao) is ‘horizontally challenged’, thanks to the various delicacies her cook husband Ah Rong (Dennis Nieh) concocts as part of his television food programme. And indeed, it is this almost documentary part of the movie that I found much more intriguing. There are some nicely drawn parallels between the food preparation and the state of the characters. For instance, we are introduced to Ah Jie as a live fish is beaten on the head, before having its body cut up. When presented on the plate, it is bloody but still alive, gasping at air. While it is difficult to imagine anyone having the stomach to eat it, its desperation prepares us for Ah Jie at his wits end.
Chyi too finds herself pretty lonely, with a husband who has
perhaps found a new love (a guy) and, while she dispenses advice over the phone, she is clearly in need of some herself. Lacking intimacy in her life, she resorts to finding it in a bathtub of eels! Those expecting eroticism will be disappointed – such scenes are quite unsexy.
In the end, I appreciated the film, not as a whole, but in the moment, where the strengths of individual scenes surpass attempts to find deeper meaning. Particularly enjoyable were indelible scenes in which Ah Jie and Shin have their pictures taken on a joyride and the ending which, following other surreal moments in the movie, leaves a very dream-like, picturesque impression.

Stefan S