Help Me, Eros - The 2000s Taiwanese Film About Sex, Drugs, And Spiralling
What’s more erotic than wasting your savings away on a designer couch, smoking homegrown weed, and flirting with the lady on the other side of the suicide hotline?
Help Me, Eros defines a new layer of sexiness with languor, neon lights, ostentatious lingerie, mental health, and the intrinsic desire to be loved.
Released in 2007, Help Me, Eros is a stunningly lyrical film hidden under trashy lifestyles of gaudy hedonism and desperately searching for love where you shouldn’t. It was directed by the Taiwanese director Lee Kang-sheng, with Tsai Ming-liang, the director of Rebels of the Neon God, as the producer.
Brace yourself for something like the blockbuster film Fifty Shades of Grey, except it’s happening in urban Kaohsiung, Taiwan, and instead of following a cheesy plotline of pseudo-billionaire BDSM, it’s a trippy ordeal of gourmet cooking, secret identities, eels, and lottery tickets.
The story follows Jie, a man that was once successful and is now left to rot in his apartment alone. He grows marijuana plants in his flat, and except for calling the suicide hotline to talk to the counselor Chyi, nothing seems to excite him. Though he begs Chyi to finally meet, she’s reluctant; after all, she is married. But by chance, he meets Shin, a betel nut beauty, and the two begin a tumultuous romance that may or may not push Jie further down in his depression.
The unemployed Jie, who’s only afloat with the help of drugs and his sexual fantasies, reflects the mind of many who feel directionless in this oversaturated era. Dramatically artistic, erotic, and orchestrated so that each scene is ominous but camp, Help Me, Eros couldn’t be a more fitting title: the characters of this film all seek solace through the animalistic feeling of lust, desperately clinging onto whatever fantasies they have. It’s tragic in the way you don’t expect it, and a vivid shower of neon and hope.
About the Author:
Mizuki Khoury
Born in Montreal, based in Tokyo. Sabukaru’s senior writer and works as an artist under Exit Number Five.
