Successful movies, at some crucial moment, invite you down the rabbit hole. From that tripping point it's up to the skill of the filmmaker to make the journey entertaining or, even better, meaningful.

“;Parking,”; a new film by Taiwan's Chung Mung-Hong—serving as director, writer and cinematographer!—takes the rabbit hole seriously. In this case it's the most mundane of events: A double-parked car on the street keeps a young man trapped in his parking space.

It's Mother's Day, he has a restive wife at home, he's trying to pick up a nice little chocolate cake to celebrate, but this is a run-down part of town. He wants to get in and get out. The parking spot is right next to a seedy barber shop, but the barber has only one hand. The barber's ridiculously cramped bathroom has a fish head the size of a basketball marinating in the filthy sink.

And what is there to celebrate? It become clear from his phone talk that they are not parents and are somewhat estranged. Why does Mother's Day matter so much?

The young chap is played by Chang Chen, a reactive type of actor who seems curiously passive in the steadily mounting absurdity of his predicament. He's mostly bemused by events, to the point of being oddly neutral, and is drawn into a series of tightly drawn vignettes featuring an old couple with an orphaned child; a mainland sex worker (a graphic scene or two); a loathsome yet philosophical pimp; a tailor who dreams big; and gangsters whose idea of roughing somebody up is to pants them.

“;Parking”; is cleverly photographed by Chung. Watch for metaphoric props popping up in otherwise undistinguished establishing shots; camera angles that accentuate claustrophobia and paranoia; a lighting scheme in which the world is lit by sputtering neon tubes. We've all been there and we'd rather be home.

“;Parking”; is billed as a dark comedy, and it will remind you a bit of Martin Scorsese's “;After Hours”; and it will give you a fair idea of what passes for dark comedy in Taiwan. Although the film does tie up things in a fairly neat manner, there are enough loose strings to suggest that the rabbit hole could easily have tunneled in other directions.