Seven Days in Heaven

When this film, about a Taiwanese family's elaborate funeral preparations, opens with Harry Belafonte singing “Hava Nagila,” you know you're in for an interesting ride. SEVEN DAYS IN HEAVEN is a crazy quilt of a movie about the strange procedures families undergo in the name of escorting loved ones properly into the afterlife. The film follows the experiences of an urban intellectual who returns home to rural Taiwan for her father's funeral. As family members gather to participate in the seven-day mourning vigil, their sorrow is fused with black humor. A professional mourner wails and grovels in the dust behind the funeral cortege. After a minute or two, she pops up for a soda break, asking “Who am I crying for again?” When the deceased's children are instructed to arrange some of his favorite things around his body, they rush forward with cigarettes and girlie magazines. The Taoist priest checks everyone's horoscopes to find the best time for cremation. Livening up the ceremonies are a marching band and a decorative stack of canned goods, which unfortunately begins exploding in the hot sun. No doubt the old guy would have approved. (In Mandarin and Taiwanese with subtitles) –B.B.