Four stars. Rated PG, no particular reason
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.15.20
Reprimands intended to be helpful, but delivered with too much irritation, can have devastating consequences.
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| Try as she might, Angela (Christine Ko) can't begin to connect with herfather, Pin-Jui (Tzi Ma), who has spent decades burying his emotions so far, that they may be irretrievable. |
Writer/director Alan Yang’s Tigertail — a Netflix original — is a quietly heartbreaking depiction of how emotional isolation can be transmitted from parent to child, to the ongoing detriment of both. Tang’s approach is methodical and unhurried; even at an economical 91 minutes, his film can feel slow (particularly during the initial half hour).
But the payoff is worth the investment; the final few minutes are surprisingly powerful. There may not be a dry eye in the house.
Yang’s script traces key events in the life of his protagonist, Pin-Jui, during three time streams: young childhood, early adulthood and post-retirement. The latter phase is played by the magnificent Tzi Ma, whose finely shaded portrayal of withdrawn stoicism is conveyed mostly through sad eyes and a slumped frame (even, seemingly, when he stands erect). They depict silent resignation; this is a man who has completely abandoned any effort to find joy in life.
Given that he seems to have built a comfortably middle-class life, how could this possibly be? What could have happened?
We initially meet Pin-Jui as a little boy in Taiwan (played by Zhi-Hao Yang) — at the time, still under Chinese communist rule — living with his grandparents and helping work their vast rice fields. His father is dead; his mother is elsewhere in a nearby city, struggling to find work, in order to reunite with her only child. The boy misses her, and occasionally hallucinates seeing his parents in the distance, working the same rice field.
Harsh reality brings tears to his eyes, which his grandmother (Li Li Pang) curtly dismisses:
“Crying never solves anything. Be strong. Never let anyone see you cry.”
And there it is: the seed from which bitter fruit will spring, decades later.
But not immediately. The middle time stream finds Pin-Jui (now played by Hong-Chi Lee) toiling alongside his mother, Minghua (Yang Kuei-mei), in a sugar factory. The work is hard — and dangerous — but they lead an acceptable, if meager existence. And Pin-Jui has been lucky enough to re-connect with childhood friend Yuan (Yo-Hsing Fang); the two are deeply in love.
