Cafe. Waiting. Love finishes off a trio of excellent films that I watched over the past 24 hours. This quirky, offbeat Taiwanese comedy by director Chiang Chin-lin and written by Giddens Ho is both irresistible and goofy .
Siying (Vivian Sung) is a university freshman who one day follows a cute, nameless guy (Marcus Chang) to a cafe where he seems to spend a lot of time. While there, she sees a recruitment ad and gets a job alongside professional coffee maker, A Bu-si (Megan Lai), who can make anything her customers ask of her. The cafe’s owner (Vivian Chow) just sits alone at the same seat looking longingly out the window most days. Siying also meet A-Tuo (Bruce) around this time and while she’s initially hesitant of his university legend (amongst other things he has to skate around in a bikini carrying a cabbage all the time) the two grow close as friends and those initial barriers between the both of them are broken down.
Cafe. Waiting. Love‘s greatest strength is the characters it builds its story off. Siying is, on face value, quite the annoying, nosey, gossipy sort of girl. She seems very judgemental and eager to involve herself in other peoples business, but as we get to know her more, much like the characters do in the film, our stance softens somewhat as we begin to understand her and see what makes her tick. She becomes less intrusive, more fearless. Eager to know things because she’s interested and interesting like that. The film’s other big character is the happy-go-lucky, extremely likeable A-Tuo, who seems to pop up everywhere from a local market stall to a former film star’s restaurant. The film also boasts wonderful visuals that go hand-in-hand with the light-hearted nature of the story. It can get a little cheesy at times but it’s only fleeting and fits in with the style enough to be forgiveable.
This is a great film about the happiness, the sorrow, the craziness, the zaniness, the hilarity and the sheer unexpectedness of love. All characters have a story about love here, all characters have a history and something to say whether it’s Siying’s untested fresh approach or Brother Bao (Lee Luo) – a former gangster film director/actor now turned mediator for local gangs and his wife of 16 years, Auntie Jin-dao (Pauline Lan), who have not spoken in 16 years, and are waiting for the other to apologize. It seems that while all our characters are in love, they all seem to be waiting on someone else.
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