[Herald Interview] TV veteran Frankie Chen kicks down the door to film world

When she sat down to chat with The Korea Herald, Taiwanese producer and director Frankie Chen was glowing, coming straight from meeting thousands of festival attendees at an outdoor event at the Busan International Film Festival. 

Chen was amazed at the Korean audience’s enthusiasm for her film. In her nostalgic romance flick “Our Times,” two high school friends who each have a crush on a guy and girl dating each other work together to try and tear them apart -- only to end up falling in love with one another.

“(The Korean audience) laughed exactly in the scenes where the Taiwanese audiences had laughed,” she said, speaking through a translator. “I realized that barriers of language and culture don’t matter if your film has heartwarming moments and laughter.”

A veteran of producing hit TV romantic dramas in Taiwan including “Fated to Love You,” which was later remade in Korea with the same title, Chen is no stranger to the magical and magnetic effect of on-screen love. 

She hoped to reach more people with that effect through “Our Times,” her directorial debut, and she succeeded: Since its local release in August, “Our Times” has become the fifth highest-grossing domestic film in Taiwanese box office history, according to news reports quoting distributor Hualien Media International.

“I didn’t want to make a kids’ romance movie, but one that could connect with people who were older and had more experience. So I set the movie in the 1990s, and made the protagonist a very ordinary girl,” Chen explained. The movie follows the characters over 20 years, through which Chen says the audience can see them “grow and mature.”

“I want women to see this movie and remember their past, when they were young and beautiful and courageous. I wanted to tell everyone not to forget who they once were.”

According to Chen, creating a film was very different from her previous work with TV series.

“Films are watched in a dark room on a big screen, and is a very sensory experience,” she said. “What happens on-screen has to be like our own real experiences in order to be persuasive. But dramas are watched on a small screen at home, surrounded by ordinary things. So it’s a little more dreamlike, exaggerated.”

When asked if there would be more films to come, Chen replied, “I’m reading a lot of screenplays and I’ll choose one that I’m able to make well. I don’t think it will be about love. I want to make a movie that will surprise people who learn it was made by a woman. Thriller, action, comedy,” she said.

“No matter what kind of movie I choose, I will always put my audience first when making it.”

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)