The Great Buddha+

A black comedy about two Taiwanese down-and-outers who stumble into a dark underworld of misdeeds transforms into a sobering modern fable.

Fiendishly funny and satirical, The Great Buddha+ uses humour like a barbed lash. Belly Button (Bamboo Chen), a junk collector, spends his evenings in the cramped office of his only friend, Pickle (Cres Chuang), an unassuming nightwatchman at a factory. Kevin, the factory’s wealthy boss, is overseeing the manufacture of a bronze Buddha for the site of a new temple. Belly Button coaxes Pickle into watching raunchy dashcam footage from his boss’s Mercedes. The film’s stylised black-and-white cinematography is in pointed contrast to the more ‘colourful’ goings-on captured on camera.