Help Me, Eros

The film opens in modern Kaohsiung with Jie lounging on a designer sofa as a cookery show demonstrates live fish preparation. The image sets a bleak mood of appetite and detachment. Jie wanders his nearly empty apartment, cooking noodles and tending his closet marijuana plants while he calls a suicide hotline counselor.

Jie roams his near-empty apartment, cooking instant noodles and tending his closet marijuana nursery. He compulsively calls counselor Chyi on the suicide hotline, seeking a more human connection than the automated service provides. Recently fired from his stockbroker job, he sells off his remaining designer furniture at a pawn shop to make ends meet.

Chyi is introduced as a young, overloaded counselor, initially reluctant to indulge Jie’s fantasies. The film then shifts to her domestic life, where her husband hosts a lavish dinner while a friend watches TV, and a surreal bathroom scene with live eels hints at blurred boundaries. These moments underscore the tension between fantasy and real life.

Jie encounters Shin, the new betel nut girl, at the street kiosk beneath the building where she struggles to fit in with the established staff. He pays for cigarettes with an out-of-circulation coin and receives a reprimand, marking their first interaction. Later he offers to drive her somewhere.

Jie slips into a used-car lot and, using a key he brings, reveals another possession he has given up since losing his job. He and Shin drive around the city, taking their own photo using a speed camera and eventually parking to share a joint of his home-grown marijuana. He cups his hands around their faces to blow the smoke toward them.

The pair engage in a sequence of acrobatic sexual positions, with Jie lifting and suspending Shin in various poses. Afterward, Chyi contacts Jie on MSN, and her avatar appears to be a thinner coworker, which Jie assumes must be her. Chyi is too embarrassed to deny it and plays along.

Next morning Shin arrives at Jie's apartment with water, only to discover the water and power are off due to unpaid bills. Jie refuses her offer to help pay and Shin becomes angry. In retaliation, she smashes his marijuana plants and tramples them underfoot.

Shin travels to a rural plantation for work, while Jie lingers around the kiosk, hoping to hear from her. He sells the rest of his possessions, including his TV and sofa, and uses the money to buy lottery tickets.

Jie calls the hotline and leaves a message for Chyi, who is eating at a roadside restaurant and watching the cooking program that demonstrated the live carp from the opening sequence. A cutaway shows the ostrich farm scene with the husband and his lover attempting an ostrich egg omelette, ending with a dead baby ostrich that sickens Chyi. Jie informs Chyi he plans to kill himself.

In his apartment, Jie tries to kill himself by turning on the gas canister and lying on the floor, but the canister is empty. He wakes dazed, then opens the street-side windows and steps onto the sill as Chyi hurries up. Meanwhile, Shin returns and heads toward the street kiosk.

Chyi bursts into the apartment to find it empty; Jie has disappeared. On the street below, Shin is suddenly showered with a rain of lottery tickets, as if Jie’s final message to the world has been released.

Chyi and Shin stand in disbelief as the Lottery-ticket rain marks Jie’s final disappearance. The camera lingers on the empty apartment and the silent city, reinforcing a sense of detachment and unresolved longing. The film closes on Jie’s fate remaining deliberately unresolved.