Taiwan director Singing Chen waxes lyrical about religion, relationships, and stray dogs in her poetically quirky sophomore feature God Man Dog. This modern allegory follows a group of disparate souls who are very different and yet the same as they make sense of their fragile beliefs and bungled lives. Exploring self, questioning faith, and affirming life, God Man Dog's uncommon method of storytelling and odd leaps of faith should strike chords with both the doubtful and the devoted.

The first half of God Man Dog is slow moving, if not downright depressive, as the characters and their various unhappy states of existence are introduced. Pianist Ching's (Tarcy Su) mental health and marriage to Hsiung (Chang Han) take a dive after losing her baby, and her beautifully sterile life of postmodern luxury is revealed to be empty and meaningless. A superficial foray into Christianity only further strains the marriage. Impoverished alcoholic aboriginal Biung (Ulao Ugan) turns to the church to find strength to quit the bottle, but gets a lecture from the priest instead. Meanwhile, his daughter Savi (Tu Hsiao Han) living in the city goes off on a swindling spree. Saving up money for a new prosthetic leg, minister Yellow Bull (Jack Kao) limps around collecting abandoned buddha statues that end up on the back of his truck in a giant display case. He takes in homeless teen Hsien (Jonathan Chang), who lives day to day and stows away in travel buses.

If God Man Dog was judged solely on the basis of its first half, we'd be in dour arthouse waters as the characters are more alienating than interesting. The Ching and Hsiung thread feels cold as ice, lifted only by Chang Han's deep voice and the occasional gallows humor that seeps from their hypocritical lives. The Biung and Savi thread inspires the most empathy, but acting-wise, Tu Hsiao Han is rather blank, while Ulao Ugan is on the overdramatic side. And it's difficult to make heads of how Yellow Bull, Hsien, and all those statues fit into the picture.

After laying things on thick in the beginning, however, director Chen takes the characters to the road and the film begins to transform with the landscape. Ching and Hsiung go on a trip together to save their marriage, Savi heads home with gifts and guilt, Yellow Bull and Hsien hit the road in their buddha truck, and, as expected, their lives cross over on the same road thanks to a stray dog and a car accident. Once the threads cross, the story takes increasingly surreal and charming turns that make you completely forget the suppressed yawns that came before. Though the film never steps into outright fantasy or comedy, Chen dabbles readily in magical realism and oddball humor, applying quirky details, strange pacing, and a mischievous tone to the story as the characters face up to their still-serious problems. God Man Dog remains grounded in reality throughout, but it becomes increasingly light on the feet and senses, as if anything might be possible this strange night on the dark roads.

God Man Dog's oddest sight has to be Yellow Bull's trippy traveling temple truck which houses a giant buddha flanked by many smaller deities in a transparent display case. Flip the switch, and the buddha is bathed in neon pink fluorescence and surrounded by flashing lights and spinning columns. The sight of the giant buddha on the open road is fabulously striking and surreal, especially when accompanied by Sakamoto Hiromichi's loopy score. Strangely enough, this dip into the surreal also makes the film more realistic and alive in contrast to the earlier coldness. Certainly, the aboriginal villages, the abundance of stray dogs, and the gaudy grittiness of the roads in between feel a lot more like Taiwan than Ching's postmodern house back in the city.

Watching the second half of God Man Dog come together under the bright lights of the giant buddha, I suddenly remembered a temple vending machine I encountered a few years ago in Taichung. For a mere 10NT, chirpy temple music came on, and the traditionally garbed, mechanically wired female figurine inside the case rolled back to her plastic temple, picked up a paper scroll, and dropped the politely cryptic fortune into my hands. It was so strange and unexpectedly entertaining, it was almost inspiring. God Man Dog reminds me of that temple vending machine.