Conversation Topics on social changes:
- What aspects of the film can you relate to? (e.g. parent-children relationships, junior high school days, video game parlor, entrance exams, puppy love, country vs. city, flood, radio, fantasies and dreams.)
- Do you view and experience the entrance similarly or differently?
- Where did you frequent as a teenager? What were your hobbies and do you have a dream lover or idol?
- What do you feel about this film after the kidnapping case of 白曉燕 happened?
Text-Analysis Questions:
Components of a narrative film --
- Character:
- Are there evil characters in this film? How are the kidnappers presented (including A-ching 阿慶's family members)? How about the policemen? Is A-chiang's friend likely to be a rapist?
- How does the teacher push her students to study hard? How about A-chiang's parents?
- How do the teenage characters express their dreams and maintain their self-esteem, if they don't get it confirmed in the exams, by their parents or teachers? Pay close attention to A-chiang's dream and his friend's behavior.
- Setting:
- How are the two major settings, Taipei and Dong-she (東石), set in contrast to each other? What does A-ching come to Taipei for?
- Sound track:
- When do we start to hear music in this film?
- Plot and Pattern:
- The film basically develops chronologically away from Taipei and then back to it, starting and ending with a radio program. There are some repetitions or sets of contrasts which are worth discussing﹒What are they?
- recurrent motifs: fantasies
and dreams; childish games; news broadcast and faddism
- What are the functions in this film of A-chiang's story of 沙羅曼天王, who works with 金鯊天王 to rescue the mermaid? And his story of a fish which will fly after he eats up 999 dreams of children? His telling 道南 that half of him is electronic?
- 阿慶 takes the kids to the beach twice. And there they had some interesting performances of playing to be fish and making sand-dung. What do you think these episodes mean?
- How do the TV news anchoress change through the film? And the images shown on TV of the law-makers, the people welcoming A-chiang, and those pursuing a star--what do they tell us about our society?
- Major themes: entrance exam,
teenage rebellion and personal dreams; country vs. city
- How is A-juan 阿娟 a victim in this film? What are the limitations set on her and her brothers?
- Why doesn't the film tell us whether A-chiang passes the exam or not?
What points does the film try to make? To keep on having dreams?
Tropical Fish 熱帶魚（1995）