The sad thing about Xiaoxiao’s life is that everyone is so intent on making her just like everyone else rather than trying to find ways to allow her to be more of herself. The film’s English title, Trouble Girl (the Chinese being simply her name, 小曉, xiǎo xiǎo), might hint at the external attitudes towards her in which she is seen only as a disruptive troublemaker while largely friendless and bullied by the other kids in her class.
The irony is that it’s only her teacher, Mr Chen (Terrance Lau Chun-him), who is actively trying to help her but he does so from a place of corrupted paternity in that he’s been having an affair with her mother, Wei-fang (Ivy Chen Yi-han), which began as a consequence of their meetings to discuss Xiaoxiao’s ADHD diagnosis and how to manage it at school. Seemingly under stimulated, Xiaoxiao ignores her classes and plays video games instead while Mr Chen doesn’t really say anything before gently taking her aside to suggest it’s not a good idea. He’s a proponent of positive reinforcement but is also a regarded as a soft touch by some of the other parents who increasingly turn against Xiaoxiao, regarding her as a disruptive presence damaging their kids’ education.
Then again, it’s mostly these kids who are bullying Xiaoxiao for being not quite like them. Mr Chen has started some kind of secret program in which kids can get stickers for being nice to her, but it’s largely backfired as they alternately provoke Xiaoxaio because they think it’s funny when she loses her temper and act friendly when the teachers are around. Rather than attempting to make some accommodations for her, the school is only capable of trying to force her to behave in exactly the same way as everyone else. On an awkward camping trip with her mother and Mr Chen, he suggests capturing a frog but despite her fascination with them Xiaoxiao rejects the idea. She wouldn’t want the frog to be trapped in a bottle, and later attempts to free an owl from a cage symbolising her own desire to be free to be herself. After being suspended from school, she heartbreakingly tells her mother that she just wants to stay home and learn not to take pills anymore.
But then Wei-fang has problems of her own. She’s trapped too. Her husband has been living abroad for some time and it’s clear the marriage is all but over while she struggles to bond with Xiaoxiao and is ill-equipped to deal with her needs, perhaps on some level ashamed that she isn’t living up to the middle class ideals professed by the other mothers. She even may even resent her for trapping her in a dissatisfying domestic arrangement but is alternately frustrated that Xiaoxiao does not really want to play with her and prefers her father or Mr Chen. We see her struggle with her emotions too, sometimes slapping Xiaoxiao and shouting at her for doing something wrong or getting into trouble.
Her affair with Chen may be a kind of escapist fantasy, but he seems to take it seriously and provides a positive, paternal presence in the absence of Xiaoxiao’s father who though he seemed caring later offers quite a harsh critique of his daughter that suggests he regards her as a disappointment. Nevertheless, it’s quite troubling that her sort of friend Xiaoshan calls Mr Chen “Paul” and is friendlier with him than seems appropriate but then her parents are involved with running the school so perhaps she simply knows him on a more personal level. Even so, the connection seems to arouse an odd kind of jealously that interacts with her disapproval of her mother’s betrayal of her father in having the affair.
When Xiaoxiao tries to free the owl, she is surprised to discover that it simply flies back to its porch as trapped as both she and her mother though no longer with any desire for escape. Sympathetic towards the film’s twin heroines, Chin shoots with a down to earth naturalism though through the eyes of Xiaoxiao who is really just looking to be accepted for who she is while observing that her mother is much the same but even approaching middle-age seems no closer to finding accommodation or fulfilment.
Trouble Girl screened as part of this year’s Osaka Asian Film Festival.
Original trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 