During the shooting of historical epic “The Assassin” more than a decade ago, its director – the great Taiwanese filmmaker Hou Hsaio-Hsien, with his last movie – The star Shu Qi advised to pick up the camera himself. It’s like Buddha who says you may be good at meditating. Qi wisely took his advice. She spent years writing and writing about but, uncomfortable, also played in another 11 films during the eight years that came after “The Assassin.” After serving on Venice Film The festival jury two years ago, Qi became a prime of itching too difficult to leave innocent and instead of going home after the festival, she stopped in Italy to end her script.
“Girl“Is the product from these work-and a sign that Qi had the right to grab the torch from his mentor. The dark and challenging story of an abused mother who cannot help but force her suffering on her young daughter,” Girl “is a brave debut, as formally ambitious as it is genre-bended. Part of the Domestic, part, part of the Deliver, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, part, in part, part, part, of the His.
It is no coincidence that 1988, the year when “girl” begins, was one of great promises for Taiwan. Beijing had currently submitted its demand to govern the Island Nation and a new leader accelerated economic changes and the institutions of democracy. HSIAO-LEE (BAI XIAOO-YING) and her younger sister-played by Lai Yu-Fei, although the character does not get a name-go home from school on a sunlit evening and everything seems good. Until they get home. Their mother Chuan (played by Popstar 9m88, quite brilliant) is a frustrated young parent who looks back on the decisions she made with more regret than pride. The primary is her choice of man: Chiang (Roy Chiu) is an unpredictable tyrant. His arrival home every night is announced by his spouting motorcycle and his drunk stumbles up the stairs. And usually violence against Chuan.
Fortunately, the girls do not see too much of him. HSIAO-LEE imagines that her father is attacking her when she is asleep, but it is a fantasy. Qi shows these night terrors with Abject Beauty: a fluorescent lamp pressed hard on a polyester sheet that almost reaches HSIAO-LEE’s face. It is enough to make you turn in your place, as HSIAO-LEE does in sleep. Her younger sister, in the meantime, accepts her father with silence. But their mother Chuan is less happy and suffers from physical and sexual abuse that she is too afraid to complain about within or outside the home. Here, Qi makes a choice that deviates from the norm among most Western directors, who now prefer to cut away from the extremities of sexual violence or home abuse. In “Girl” we see it in all its ugliness, almost monotonous. QI does not reduce the difficulties with Chiang’s tyranny in her blunt, still direction. In its great banality, it is perhaps even more scary.
However, the main priority of “girl” is not the brutal alcoholic who is cruel to his wife. Qi is more interested in how Chuan’s motherhood is affected-and what happens when HSIAO-LEE is safe enough to rebel with his mother. HSIAO-LEE is already older and wise beyond her years, but it is when a new girl joins her school that her teens really start. Li-Li (Audrey Lin) is Americanized, after living in the states with their parents before the end of their marriage. Armed with a sharp width that can disarm and humiliate the juvenile boys in their class, introduces Li-Li Hsiao-lee to the seed side of the city, alcohol and said boys. Hsiao-lee’s teens seem to start overnight. Her back home life seems more provincial and punitive than ever, the clumsy metal door in front of their house more and more like a cage. In one of the most heartbreaking scenes in any movie so far this year, HSIAO-LEE will eventually confess her mother about what her father does to her family. Its consequences are serious – and an unwelcome reality control.
Li-Lis’s arrival at HSIAO-LEE’s school is a good metaphor for the entry of American trade and culture to Taiwan. HSIAO-LEE is spoiled by their new freedoms, but they are also dangerous. The boys who take them out of the city on their bikes seem to have good intentions, but Li-Li and HSIAO-LEE have no backup if they don’t. HSIAO-LEE is proud to skip school and disappear from home for hours at the end without announcement, but the reality to disappear is more complicated than it sounds. This is not “fat”.
And perhaps most dangerous, these dreams of modernity shine an undesirable light on the meaningless difficulty of the family’s status quo. If Chuan is not ready to go alone and embrace Hollywood that ends the world of Li-Li has been intended for her, the vocabulary for her suffering may be better known at all than just unprinted.
“Girl” challenges our preconceived perceptions of what a happy (or happier) family looks like. In its gloom and its raw depiction of abuse, it is contrary to much of what we are used to seeing in the domestic drama, much to a new voice in the director. Qi’s first movie will probably not make you hope, jump and jump out of the theater. But it will make you look forward to her next.
Rating: B.
“Girl” premiered at 2025 Venice Film Festival. It is currently seeking US distribution.
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