Po Luntai on AllMovie

Maverick director Huang Ming-chuan creates this witty drama about film and Taiwanese national identity. Location scout Ning (Ding Ning) visits provincial Hualien to be with her lover Meng (Yang Ming-hsiung), a serious-minded documentary filmmaker who shoots everything on his 16mm Bolex camera. As Meng busies himself with making a film about Kwan-yin, the Goddess of Mercy, Ning becomes a starlet on the trashy movie that she was working on. Huang deftly cuts between Meng's film, which begins to take on political dimensions, and Ning who has evolved into a snotty actress who has an affair with the leading man. The juxtaposition between films and languages (Meng speaks Hoklo, while Ning speaks imported Mandarin) creates a fascinating satire on the state of Taiwan. Flat Tire was screened at the 1999 Pusan Film Festival.