Film
Life is Cheap...But Toilet Paper is Expensive
Newly restored, this fascinating and rarely seen early feature by the seminal Asian-American filmmaker Wayne Wang (Chan Is Missing) is long overdue for some big-screen love. A Chinese-American mob courier arrives in Hong Kong with a briefcase for the Big Boss—but this noir plot is just the jumping off point for a series of vignettes and monologues drawing from local news stories and Wang’s real-life experiences during the shooting of his prior film. A singular work in Wang’s acclaimed career, Life Is Cheap…But Toilet Paper Is Expensive is a heady mix of daring performance and abstract style.
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