The Most Distant Course

01Sep08

Photo from the official film blog.

In <最遙遠的距離> The Most Distant Course, a psychiatrist abandons his job on an impulse and takes to the road. As someone formerly devoted to helping people transcend the personal hells of their own making, how else can he run from his own demons, but through psychological escape routes? Our tormented shrink hires a prostitute to engage in roleplay with him, tries and fails to get fresh with a betel-nut girl, and finally confronts reality – if only that which is already overdue – by arriving for a wedding three years late.

But the address on the invite no longer exists, and eventually he finds himself along the coastal highway of Taiwan’s southernmost point. There is scuba gear and even suit, yet jumping into the surf crashing against the rocks would mean certain death. No matter: he puts on the equipment, zips himself up in black, and starts breaststroking, flippers on feet, along the road. We hear the tortured breathlessness of his carthasis as he struggles on noisily, the scratchy flop of plastic against tar relentless, dogged, pained. How much of this swimming—-no, how much of his self is real and imagined, and how much of either is valid? Is his quest, in all its desperation and futility, a search for the self, or a flight from it?

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