‘Girl’ Trouble
Shu Qi is the latest actor to flex new director muscles. Her sophomore effort should be great.
Girl
Director: Shu Qi • Writer: Shu Qi
Starring: Bai Xiao-ying, 9m88, Audrey Lin, Roy Chiu
Taiwan • 2hrs 4mins
Opens Hong Kong November 6 • IIB
Grade: B-
I am Team Shu Qi all the way. It’s hard not to get behind a woman that went from discounted vaguely sex kitten soft-core pin-up, to Cat III legend and the girlfriend of a Heavenly King, to breakout star in Derek Yee’s racing-towards-classic Viva Erotica, to Hou Hsiao-hsien muse (Millennium Mambo, Three Times, The Assassin) and Hong Kong Film Award and Golden Horse Award-winner with such aplomb. She’s finally having a real moment too, starring in Bi Gan’s forthcoming Resurrection, which had everyone at Cannes yammering this year, not to be confused with the Netflix series The Resurrected from October, a bonkers supernatural revenge thriller. Shu’s been able to bounce from High Art to Trash and back, never really suffering any “Tsk tsk” for her choices – and her noodles aren’t bad either.
So I for one welcome the evolution of Lin Li-hui into a writer-director and Venice Golden Lion nominee with Girl | 女孩, her feature debut that’s unfortunately … fine. Girl is a fairly typical coming-of-age drama, one that’s elevated by its semi-autobiographical source material and its decidedly Hou-esque formalism; no way Shu works on three Hou films and doesn’t pick up a few habits from the director of A City of Sadness. But Girl also teems with first timer tics and indulgences, as well as reductive writing that dilutes the story’s innate impact. Breaking cycles of violence and living with a traumatic sense of unworthiness instilled by a parent is a familiar story, but not one that can ever be told too many times. The catch with Girl is that the girl at the heart of the story, Lin Hsiao-lee, is surrounded by archetypes that never give her space to say something new.
The other one looks like the favourite
Hsiao-lee is nonetheless propped against rich mise-en-scène, vividly lensed by Better Days DOP Yu Jing-pin in long, languid takes that often rely on diagetic sound in the storytelling. It’s 1988 and Bai Xiao-ying (My Missing Valentine) plays Hsiao-lee, a high shcool student juggling a flaky little sister (Lai Yu-fei), an overworked mother, Chuan (jazz singer 9m88, AKA Joanne Tang Yu-chi), and an alcoholic father, Chiang (TV actor and singer Roy Chiu Tse) to the best of her ability in order to keep the peace in her cripplingly unhappy home. She’s hungry most of the time – regular fainting spells have the school nurse watching out for her – and any extra change goes to her sister’s snacks. Hsiao-lee listens for Chiang’s motobike every night and makes sure to be long gone when he gets in. She start to push back on her passive resignation when she meets Taiwanese-American transfer student Li-li (Audrey Lin Pin-tung, Trouble Girl), herself with her own family issues but also possessed of a DGAF brass that helps her cope. Their friendship inspires a resolve in Hsiao-lee to demand better for herself.
Intercut occasionally with Hsiao-lee’s growing confidence are flashbacks to Chuan’s youth, and the abusive, misogynistic years that saw her (probably) sexually assaulted, thrown out of the house for her great “shame” of being pregnant and taking up with the then-charming Chiang. Chuan’s history is meant to illuminate the roots of her unfocused rage at Hsiao-lee and her misguided belief that tough love and a dose of the reality she lived will help her daughter in the long run.
There’s no getting around it: Girl flirts with misery porn, no matter how beautifully packaged it may be. Girl is an incredibly technically astute film that shows more than it tells, and flashes of glorious impressionism sit side-by-side with a garish ’80s Taiwan realism that looks fantastic. Shu’s opted for an immersive language that’s graceful in how it puts us in Hsiao-lee’s headspace, emphasising her POV. The way Yu’s tight camera captures the terror of what might be Chiang getting handsy with Hsiao-lee is palpable, as is the smothering humidity (those are sad fans) that makes the flat an even more oppressive space. Shu has a great eye, and feel, for time and place but drops the ball when it comes to shading anyone other than Hsiao-lee. Her sister: Brat. Chuan: Terrible mother. Chiang: Rapist pig. The bond between Hsiao-lee and the liberating Li-li is never really fleshed out, leaving a giant question mark about why a pushy first day at school and a night of karaoke with some strange boys made such a difference. Bai and 9m88/Tang’s performances go a long way to filling in those blanks through sheer will, bringing veracity to their tricky mother-daughter dynamic that may not have been on the page. By the time Esther Liu Pin-yan (Salli) drops in as the adult Hsiao-lee, her lingering trauma is demonstrated more than it’s felt. Girl is genuine, and most of the time we can “get” where Shu is going, even if she doesn’t quite have the map yet. But hey, even Hou’s first film was just fine. Here’s looking forward to #2.