Mucky Suds
Giddens Ko’s fourth feature is a super-high concept rom-com that would be best served by ditching the potty humour.
Miss Shampoo
Director: Giddens Ko • Writer: Giddens Ko, based on his novel
Starring: Vivian Sung, Hong Yu-hong, Kai Ko, Emerson Tsai, Ying Wei-min, Kent Tsai, Pai Ching-i, Miao Ke-li, Chu Chung-heng
Taiwan • 2hrs
Opens Hong Kong August 24 • IIB
Grade: B-
Regardless of whether you like his films, you can’t accuse author (he was novelist first)-filmmaker Giddens Ko Ching-teng of never swinging for the fences. He’s gone from treacly romance (You Are the Apple of My Eye), to horror-comedy (Mon Mon Mon Monsters) and whatever the afterlife-romance of Till We Meet Again was. His latest, Miss Shampoo | 請問，還有哪裡需要加強, is the distillation of all his films into one kooky multi-hyphenate that lets down its engaging cast by wallowing in juvenile humour before capping everything off with a garish bloodbath. Oh, and there’s baseball. Adapting his own novel Precisely Out of Control, Ko starts with a high concept just goofy enough to work: a gangster, Tai (Nine One One rapper Daniel Hong Yu-hong) is given refuge in a salon where baseball-obsessed hairdresser Fen (Vivian Sung Yun-hua) is working late on her terrible styling skills. Oil and water romantic hijinks ensue.
Ko has proven one of his strong suits is stitching together mismatched parts, and Miss Shampoo starts well enough, thanks in part to Hong’s natural appeal, but a superfluous subplot about Fen’s love of baseball and a schoolyard sports beef (no one would have missed it if it were excised), and a metric ton of dick and toilet jokes (no, truth, there’s a long ass scene where Tai vows his dick belongs only to Fen that just. Will. Not. End.) drag the whole thing down towards the gutter where it doesn’t belong. I get genre mash-ups, but sometime the contrasting tones simply don’t click. It’s less offensive than it is exhausting. And the extra layers of fat ultimately hurt the pacing. Say it with me everyone: This movie is too long.
But for at least two-thirds of Miss Shampoo the contrasting tones do match, in a slickly produced entertaining romp, with a bevy of colourful side characters (another Ko hallmark) all wrapped up in an intricately plotted, criss-crossing plot. Tai stumbles into Fen’s salon because his boss has just been murdered, and a rival gang’s hit squad is after him. To thank her for hiding him, Tai orders the other members of his gang to get their hair done by Fen, to hilariously (if predictably) varied results. Among the best is a late-period middle-aged housewife semi-perm Tai himself gets. In the meantime, a power vacuum opens within the gang, which Tai’s lieutenant Long Legs (Ko regular Kai Ko Chen-tung) considers filling, while Tai and Long Legs deal with a housing development project the city’s entire underworld is dipping its corrupt finger in. On top of all that, Long Legs worries Tai is getting distracted by his new relationship and trying to impress Fen’s family. It wouldn’t be a (partly) gangster thriller without some back-stabbing and brutal violence, nor would it be a (partly) rom-com without the girl at one point realising the guy is wrong for her for some contrived reason. The dash to the airport in Miss Shampoo is usurped for a speeding drive to the beauty parlour.
So where does baseball come into all of this? Not a clue, but considering the density of plot when it’s only the odd couple romance we’re talking about it just gets in the way. It’s supposed to say something about honesty, integrity and knowing who you are but all of that could have been accomplished without the detour that really goes nowhere. When Ko finally gets back on track and heads towards the (duh) happy, Godfather-ish ending, the backstory has just been a useless diversion. It doesn’t even really have any life-as-baseball metaphors to run with. Despite all this, Sung (perky) and Hong (a genuine find) manage to break through as conflicted woman who’s saddles herself with a bad, bad, bad boy and a man trying to step beyond the confines of his insular, grim world. The other Ko, Kai, and Kent Tsai Chang-hsien (The Sadness) headline a strong supporting cast that keeps most of Miss Shampoo buoyant if occasionally puerile. Regular Ko DOP Chou Yi-hsien (Detention) separates Fen and Tai’s worlds with vivid colour and tight camerawork, even it it’s not quite as creative as the duo’s work in Till We Meet Again. Ko is always worth checking out, and this is no different, even if it feels like one step back from the relative maturity of Meet Again. But if you’re only here for the hair-dos consider yourself blessed. — DEK