‘Double Happiness’ Review: A Messy Taiwanese Comedy-Drama

In Chinese culture, “double happiness” refers to an ornamental design commonly found festooned across wedding ceremonies, formed by placing two copies of the Chinese character for joy next to each other. In doing so, it forms a kind of hybrid character, one that literally doesn’t mean anything, but is accorded a certain significance for how it handily represents the intended satisfaction of both bride and groom, and by extension their families. Such a conundrum is clearly on the mind of Taiwanese director Joseph Chen-Chieh Hsu, whose film “Double Happiness” uses an absurd premise — a couple holds two weddings at the same time in order to appease the groom’s parents — as a means of bringing out all manner of familial tensions, with decidedly mixed results.

Tim Kao (Kuang-Ting Liu) is the high-strung head chef at the Grand Hotel in Taipei, who is about to be married to Daisy Wu (Jennifer Yu). Having experienced his parents’ divorce at a young age, he has constantly tried to appease and cater to both sides of his family for many years, which has resulted in his most ambitious and foolhardy plan to date.

After Tim’s dentist father Frank (Chung Hua Tou) refuses to allow his ex-wife, successful CEO Carina Bai (Kuei-Mei Yang), to attend the wedding ceremony and reception, the groom resolves — with the extensive coordination of Daisy, her family, his coworkers and wedding planner Regina (singer-turned-actor 9m88) — to hold two weddings on the same day at the hotel, with bride, groom and father-in-law (Tenky Tin) shuttling back and forth between the two while the guests remain none the wiser.

Aside from a brief prologue establishing Tim’s first literal inklings of his love of food in the midst of his grief over his parents’ separation, this surprisingly long film takes place over the course of this single chaotic day. It initially operates in a pseudo-“Birdman” vein, using a percussive score and long…