26/07/2007

Fortissimo Films has acquired all worldwide sales rights, except Taiwan and Malaysia, for director Lee Kang-Sheng’s Help Me Eros (Bang Bang Wo Ai Shen). The director often collaborates with auteur Tsai Ming-Liang (The Wayward Cloud, I Don’t Want To Sleep Alone).

This is Lee Kang-Sheng’s second feature following his lauded debut The Missing (Bu Jian), which won the New Currents Award at the Pusan International Film Festival 2003 and the Tiger Award at the Rotterdam Film Festival the same year.

The film is produced by Vincent Wang for Homegreen Films with Tsai Ming-Liang taking on executive producer duties and deal with failed stockbroker Ah Jie (played by the director himself) who is broke after a stock market crash and seeks refuge in homegrown marijuana. In desperation, he calls a suicide hotline and is drawn into a telephonic relationship with the overweight counselor Chyi who in turn is obsessed with food after marrying a celebrity chef.

Ah Jie projects his Chyi (who he has never met) fantasies onto a girl at a nearby stall. Eventually, in a haze of weed smoke, they are all drawn into a world of erotic fantasies and orgies before, inevitably, reality kicks in.

The deal was struck between Vincent Wang and Fortissimo’s Co-Chairman Wouter Barendrecht. “We have known Lee Kang-Sheng for a long time, since working together on films such as Vive L'Amour and What Time Is It There? So it is very exciting to see him blossom into his own as a world-class director with this daring, hilarious and shockingly explicit film. We are proud to be representing this film as well as continuing our long-term relationship with Homegreen Fims."