The Taiwan Oyster | Telescope Film
The Taiwan Oyster

The Taiwan Oyster

Critic Rating

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  • Taiwan,
  • United States
  • 2012
  • · 105m

Director Mark Jarrett
Cast Billy Harvey, Jeff Palmiotti, Leonora Lim, Erin King
Genre Drama

In Taiwan in the year 2000—just thirteen years after the lifting of the Martial Law in Taiwan and a place known as “the wild, wild east,” two young American expats embark on a Kerouac-esque road trip. This darkly comic film explores deep existentialist questions as the friends journey deeper and deeper into the Taiwanese countryside.

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What are critics saying?

80

Variety by Peter Debruge

Disguised as a drunken cartwheel through expat paradise, Mark Jarrett’s striking feature juggles questions of mortality along its rowdy cross-country path.

75

McClatchy-Tribune News Service by Roger Moore

Mark Jarrett’s amiable road picture has a morbid whimsy and a coming-of-age hook.

70

The New York Times

Part romance, existential meditation and dark comedy, the film, like its perplexed characters, isn’t always certain of what it wants to be. Yet in the end it does pretty well for itself, despite those self-doubts.

70

The New York Times by Ken Jaworowski

Part romance, existential meditation and dark comedy, the film, like its perplexed characters, isn’t always certain of what it wants to be. Yet in the end it does pretty well for itself, despite those self-doubts.

67

IndieWire

The Taiwan Oyster manages to be consistently engaging despite its flaws.

67

IndieWire by Gary M. Kramer

The Taiwan Oyster manages to be consistently engaging despite its flaws.