Vivian Hsu: The Emperor and the Maiden

While I was leaving Axel Munthe's Villa, a group of tourists was standing nearby listening to the vivid stories of a polyglot travel guide. He was talking so loud that I couln't help but hear what he was saying. He made a colourful narration of the life of the first Roman Emperors, who used to build palaces on the Isle of Capri, because they would not trust their own army in Rome. He talked about Tiberius and his habit to spend only one night with each maiden that he would choose, only to have her thrown down the cliff in the morning in order to keep his independance. This kind of "livid tales of cruelty" are titbits for tourists, whose screams are like a prophecy of good earnings. It is true that rumors about a "Tiberius fall" circle around Villa Jovis, on the other side of the island, but the tale of the maiden seems to come out directly from the Thousand and One Nights (the historian Suetonius had his own urban legends).

On arriving at the entrance of Anacapri, I had seen for a second a statue of a Roman Emperor that I had already spotted on the Web. In the Japanese edition of Vivian Hsu's first photobook "Angel" (chinese Tianshi Xiang), there is a tiny picture on the acknowlegements' page showing the Taiwanese singer leaning against a Statue in front of a scenic landscape of sea and island. The place is actually located inside the grounds of a palace for tourists, the Hotel Caesar Augustus. I decided to walk back to this place in order to do some shooting for a forthcoming movie involving Capri. I went through a very narrow path, coming down from Mount Barbarossa. It displayed evidence of some mud streams having used this way down during the rainy winter season. Having arrived on the main street used by the buses coming from Marina Grande, I turned to the right and started to go downhill. A few steps later, I saw the gate of the Hotel. I didn't have any valid reason to venture into the property and I decided to go back to the place where I had seen the statue from the bus.

And suddenly the statue was in front of me, at the very edge of a large terrace. The place wasn't crowded, because the tourist season had not begun. I could take pictures through the holes in the fence and I shot some sequences with my movie camera. The road is quite narrow and it is dangerous to walk on either side. They have built a few shelter areas for pedestrians on the way down to Marina Grande. I made a stop at one of these shelters, and I enjoyed the view on Hotel Caesar Augustus and the statue from that point. I had a breathtaking outlook on the cliff on which the hotel had been built and a scenic view on the sea stretching as far as the peninsula of Sorrento.

While I was checking every aspect of the terrace, I suddenly understood why Vivian looked so unhappy on the picture with the statue. Because she is not exactly a tall girl, the technical crew had asked her to climb on a restaurant table that had been pushed against the statue. She was in a rather dangerous position and was awfully scared, maybe even overcome by vertigo. Did she ever hear something about "Tiberius fall"?

This reminded me of a few other pictures of the photobook where she looked unhappy. Dispite of the success of Tianshi Xiang, I believe that this first trip to Italy with Chen Wen-Ping didn't leave to our young girlie only good memories. She was rather brave and she showed her commitment and her trustworthiness by accepting to keep her promises, to fulfill her pledges and to honour her contract in spite of the unforeseen difficulties or embarrassments.

By now the clouds had almost disappeared and the blue sky was surrounding the old ruins of the fortress of Mount Barbarossa on the very edge of the mountain. After a morning of doubt and disappointment due to the misty weather, I really enjoyed this mild afternoon. In the first days of March, this favourable weather was quite a miracle.

My thoughts went back to the young chinese girl named Vivian Hsu. She had been there in spring, probably not so early in the year. She had probably spent at least one night at Hotel Caesar Augustus, since the terrace can only be accessed by customers. And the hotel doesn't seem to open its restaurant to the general public. But it is also possible that things had changed over the years. Only the beautiful view remained for sure. In selecting the pictures for her photobook, the photographer removed as many clues as possible regarding the location and the surrounding landmarks. He probably thought that nobody would take the time to give a close look to the tiny picture on the last page of such a marvellous collection of teenager pictures. And who knows Anacapri in Asia?

The question is: why Anacapri? Vivian Hsu's first photobook includes pictures from Sicily (I have identified undoubtedly places in Messina, Palermo and Cefalu) and from the Isle of Capri. There is a slight possibility that a few pictures have been shot in the hilly wheat-growing area of Tuscany or Campania and in the Solfatare, a very peculiar volcano near Naples (Pozzuoli). What attracted Vivian or her photographer to Anacapri? That remains a mystery to me!