Help Me Eros

Taiwan, 2007
aka Bang Bang Wo Ai Shen
Director: Kang-sheng Lee
Starring: Jane Liao, Dennis Nieh, Yin Shin, The F4 girls - Amy, Stacy, Tiffany, Fanny

Actor Lee Kang-sheng, muse to filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang for more than a decade, returns to the director's chair five years after his debut feature The Missing. Adhering to his mentor's brand of cinema, Help Me Eros reflects on the anomie engendered by consumer culture through a kinky hodgepodge of sex, food, marijuana and betel nut beauties.

At the center of the modern fable lies Ah Jie (played by Lee), who, after losing all his money on the stock market, seeks relief by smoking joints rolled from the marijuana plants he grows in the wardrobe in his repossessed apartment. He calls a help line every once in a while to look for comfort from Chyi (Jane Liao), a volunteer counselor whose fleshy figure remains hidden on the other side of the line.

When Ah Jie isn't stalking an attractive young woman he thinks is Chyi, he is sexually engaged with Shin (Yin Shin), a new girl working at the betel nut stand near his apartment. The erotic and psychedelic trips soon involve four other scantily clad betel nut girls (played by the F4 girls) in a series of sexual antics.

For those who don't know what Betelnut girls are (and I didn't until I googled it), they are scantily clad girls seen on the side of many roads in Taiwan selling betelnut. Betelnut is enjoyed throughout Asia and is a mild (or not so mild) stimulant.

The F4 girls are a Taiwanese pop-culture commodity, apparently trading on their looks and not much else. They appear in the film dressed as a Dominatrix, Bride, Schoolgirl, and Nurse ... and look damn good doing it!

Screenshots - click to enlarge

Trailer