Actor/filmmaker Doze Niu Chen-zer (playing himself) is a television star trying to get funding for his breakout film, a mockumentary skewering local politics. The process, however, not only complicates his financial problems but also goes to his head in hilarious extreme in this cutting satire of the Taiwanese film industry. With searing self-mockery worthy of Steve Coogan, Niu takes the start-up money his producer has scraped together from government sources—or at least the portion he doesn’t divert to drugs and prostitutes—and tries to expand it via the stock market. At the same time, and while courting the mob as a source of executive producers, his relationship with his girlfriend Ning Ning (Chang Chun-ning) deteriorates, forcing the couple into therapy with only worsening effects. Filmed vérité-style and laced with genuinely dramatic moments, this savagely funny and unsparing portrait of showbiz corruption is buoyed by wonderfully realistic performances from its supporting cast.

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Written by Doze Niu Chen-zer, Tseng Li-ting, Tsai Tsung-han. Photographed by Chou Yi-wen. With Doze Niu Chen-zer, Chang Chun-ning, Ke Huan-ru, Chen Hei-sheng, Wu Kuei-chun, Tsai Hsin-hung. (96 min, Fame Universal Entertainment)