Publication Date: 02-19-2026

Life Is Cheap… But Toilet Paper Is Expensive (1989) review

Dir. Wayne Wang

By: Steve Pulaski

Rating: ★★½

If Eat a Bowl of Tea was Wayne Wang’s mannered return to Chinatown following his first mainstream critical failure, then his follow-up, Life Is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive is a work of cinematic anarchy, completely unbound to narrative convention and pridefully so.

Up until Arbelos Films gave the film and installed some additional, previously unseen scenes — most of which low-resolution footage shot on location in Hong Kong during the late 1980s production — Life Is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive was incredibly difficult to find. The film obtained some notoriety ahead of its August 1990 release when the MPAA slapped it with the rare kiss-of-death “X rating.” Silverlight Entertainment boldly decided to reject the rating and assign the film its own: “A,” signifying “adults only.” This was before the MPAA introduced the NC-17 rating, which, unfortunately like its predecessor, “X,” basically locks any film with the rating out of major theater chains and prohibits conventional marketing opportunities.

Wang’s film takes inspiration from various cinematic legends, and isn’t shy about it whatsoever. For one, some characters have names like “Taxi Driver” and “Blue Velvet.” Structurally, the film is akin to Jean Luc-Godard’s debut Breathless, right down to its staccato pacing—no, complete rejection of plot conventions. The bones of the story involves a handsome man (Spencer Nakasako) in a black cowboy hat, who has been hired to transport a silver briefcase harboring unknown items (perhaps one of Quentin Tarantino’s many influences) from the United States to Hong Kong in order to give it to a mystery man. If you’re familiar with Wang’s work, you should know that, true to traditional Chinese customs, what is unseen is just as important as what is seen. It was the basis for his intensely original debut Chan Is Missing, in which two characters search for a man of whom everyone in his orbit has a different opinion.

But back to Life Is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive. While a portion of the film is narrated by Nakasako, attempting a sort of hardboiled detective drawl, long stretches go by without any context or narration. The first half is about the people he meets, some played by regular Wang collaborators like Cora Miao (as a housewife) and Victor Wong (as a flea market denizen shilling fake Rolex watches). These individuals speak to the camera (which represents our hero), and function like a documentary-style portrait of various Chinese individuals foreign to American cinema. Two goofball men are seen dubbing footage of a porno; another, who describes Hong Kong using the film’s title, slaughters ducks and revels in the bloody aftermath. It’s these sequences that likely triggered the MPAA to use their most punitive ratings stamp. However, in the similar way Wang managed to keep Eat a Bowl of Tea, a film that transcended from being a cutesy romance to a story of infidelity and attempted murder, light-hearted, even the most extreme visuals in Life Is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive are playfully executed.

Sometimes, sequences are barely coherent, with occasional sputtering flashes of red serving as a second-long interlude of a jump-cut (ala Godard only with a tinge of self-consciousness). Another shows a man’s hand being chopped off with a meat cleaver, leaving an oozing mess of veins and spurting blood. It could be our hero’s eventual fate; it could all be his posthumous account of events, which would explain the nonlinear, dreamlike structure.

The title itself could also be a reference to Wang’s personal anger following the Tiananmen Square massacre, which occurred the year prior to its release. Concretion alludes Life Is Cheap… But Toilet Paper is Expensive save for its initially humorous but no-less charged title. Wang’s complete rejection of formalism isn’t shocking when you consider how freeform and unbound Chan Is Missing and Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart were to strict plotting, instead opting to have characters and their eccentricities define the events. I admire the Godardian sensibilities he clearly harbored when venturing into total experimentation; yet, by the end, we needed some concretion and what we got was literal shit.

My review of Chan Is Missing
My review of Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart
My review of Slam Dance
My review of Eat a Bowl of Tea
My review of The Joy Luck Club

Starring: Spencer Nakasako, Lo Wai, COra Miao, Bonnie Ngai, Victor Chan, Allen Fong, and Angela Yu Chien. Directed by: Wayne Wang.