Tag: Mandarin

New Life (我会好好的, Dong Hongjie, 2025)

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A lost young woman begins to find new purpose in life after taking in a stray dog in Dong Hongjie’s tearjerking drama, A New Life (我会好好的, wǒ, huì hǎohǎo de). A tribute to the healing power of a dog’s unconditional love, the film is partly about the grieving process and learning to let go, but also about what it’s like to feel abandoned and hopeless. Having something to look after gives Xiaoman (Zhang Zifeng) a reason to look after herself as well as her heartbroken father who’s turned to drunken rages in the wake of his wife’s death and subsequent loss of his business.

Ironically, Zhao Bujin’s (Wang Jingchun) old wood carving shop has been taken over by a vet, though Bujin can’t seem to let it go and is intent on causing trouble there. Having lost her mother due to an illness, Xiaoman is intent on not taking up her place at university and instead is earning money as a removals driver often helping to clear houses after the death of the owner. It’s during one particular job that she’s confronted by an angry dog who refuses to leave a cardboard box where, a neighbour explains, it stayed with its mother until she died. Ever since then, he’s been unable to get out, much like Xiaoman who also remains trapped within the box of her grief.

Identifying with the dog, she begins to worry about him during a rainstorm and decides to rescue him as a means of rescuing herself. But at the same time, she doesn’t really want to keep him and continues referring to the dog as “doggie” rather than naming him while he imprints on her as a new maternal figure. There’s a half an idea in the back of her mind that there might be money in it if she cleans the dog up a bit and sells him on with the help of the vet, Chuan (Zhang Zixian), who promises to help her find a good home for it. The first couple he suggests appear to be extremely wealthy and keen to adopt, but the film seems to be critiquing the idea that a life of material comfort is better than one spent struggling with family. The wealthy couple clearly have ideas about their ideal dog and how it would fit into their Instagram-worthy life including a name that skews feminine while Xiaoman’s dog is a boy. Predictably, the couple eventually send it back when it fails to bond with them and insists on returning to Xiaoman. 

Then again, Xiaoman and her father don’t necessarily seem to be struggling all that much. Though they don’t have much money, they’ve managed to keep their sizeable home and furniture even they’re economising on food and worrying about how to make ends meet with Bujin unable to find work. Xiaoman attributes this to his drinking, though it seems he actually sustained an injury he never got treatment for which has damaged his ability to carve. In any case, his industry has also changed. Though Xiaoman is led to believe he’s found a well-paying job at a factory producing wooden statues, she later learns that he’s being paid a pittance to do an apprentice’s job doing things like prepping wood. His friend explains that only elite master carvers make money these days because all the lower grade stuff is all mass-produced by machine so there aren’t any jobs for mid-grade craftsmen like Bujin. Bujin keeps on about finding an amazing log he’ll use for his masterpiece, but like so much in his life it seems like an impossible pipe dream.

Meanwhile, Xiaoman tries to keep it together with her only goal being to buy a proper grave for her mother overlooking ocean. Nevertheless, bonding with the dog, whom she later names Xiaoyi as if it were really her brother gives, her new reasons to look after herself and think about her future. Identifying with it closely, she also comes to realise how little people value the lives of cats and dogs and by extension other people too. That’s one reason why she begins holding proper funerals for pets to give them a little dignity in death when some owners just tell the vets to get rid of their remains and don’t even bother to collect the ashes. Adopting a quasi-maternal position in caring for Xiaoyi also helps her process her own mother’s death and begin letting her go so that both she and her father can start to move on. Truly tugging at the heartstrings, Dong’s film is a tribute to the unconditional love of a dog and the healing effects it can have on a life if only someone is willing to offer it the same in return.

Trailer (no subtitles)

Unexpected Courage (我們意外的勇氣, Shawn Yu, 2025)

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Faced with a surprise pregnancy at 45, a workaholic music executive finds herself re-evaluating her life choices in Shawn Yu’s autobiographically inspired maternity drama, Unexpected Courage (我們意外的勇氣, wǒmen yìwài de yǒngqì). A kind of pun, the unexpected baby is later given the name “courage”, the film’s title hints at the resolve needed by the couple to face their new situation from the prospect of parenthood to the cracks already undermining the foundations of their relationship.

Those would partly be economic, but also their contradictory desires for professional fulfilment. The fact is that even before the baby they are already exhausted. Advertising filmmaker Po-en (Simon Hsueh) has been out all night on a shoot and walks in zombie-like just as Le-fu (René Liu), an executive at a record label, is walking out the door to travel to Shanghai with one of her stars so he can participate in a reality TV programme. They already live somewhat parallel lives and are barely connected to the extent that it seems their relationship may have run its course.

They aren’t really alone in that as Po-en discovers on running into another man at the hospital who is undergoing IVF treatment with his wife. The process is hampered by the fact that he works in Mainland China and only returns every three months which obviously makes trying for a baby logistically difficult. His wife accuses him of not really wanting children, while he later seems less than impressed on being told they’re having twins presumably because of the increased expense while his wife coldly tells him not to ask her to reduce the number because she won’t. A later phone call conversation reveals that the couple can’t afford a three-bedroom home in their preferred neighbourhood, while the husband would prefer they all move to Shenzhen which has a lower cost of living but this would necessarily mean the wife uprooting herself, losing her home and community while there would be no one left to look after her parents as they age. 

Le-fu is also considering taking a big promotion to head up the office in Beijing which is what she’s been aiming for throughout her career. It’s not clear if she intended to take Po-en with her, but in any case the discovery of the pregnancy, brought on by the scandal of one of her biggest stars being involved in a sex tape scandal, forces her to reassess her possibilities. Originally, she resolves to sign the contract and is resentful of the entire situation for throwing a spanner in the works, but is also touched by Po-en’s devotion and reluctant to give up what might be her only chance to become a mother even if it comes at the cost of her career. 

For his part, Po-en wants to keep the baby and is excited, if also anxious, about becomgina father. Having undergone a previous operation to remove part of her womb, Le-fu was led to believe she couldn’t have children and this too seems to have presented a fault-line in their relationship that prevented them from fully committing to each other. At 32, Po-en is 12 years younger, and Le-fu assumes he will eventually leave her for a younger woman while he at times seems resentful that she keeps him at arms’ length. 

The windowless hospital room in which Le-fu is confined then becomes a kind of womb from which she herself is reborn as a mother. Po-en’s tying a red ribbon to each of their wrists is both a romantic gesture that echoes the red string of fate connecting fated lovers, but also a kind of umbilical cord that finally helps them cement their relationship. Nevertheless, they also live in a patriarchal and conservative society that forces the question on them more directly as friends and family suddenly start asking if they’re getting married while others seem to disapprove of the fact that they’ve conceived a baby outside of wedlock. Likewise, the implication is that Le-fu must choose between motherhood and her career and the motherhood is the “proper” choice, negating the choice and agency she is otherwise given in the option to terminate the pregnancy. Po-en, meanwhile, wrestles with himself unsure he is up to the responsibility of fatherhood given that he did not have a father himself and therefore has no role model to follow. A grumpy sugar juice seller explains that his child will teach him, which is what children are put here to do as Le-fu has already realised. Expressing an anxiety surrounding the declining birthrate, the film does not shy away from its causes and the knock-on effects of life in a fast-paced, capitalist society but does in the end find a kind of serenity in the courage of both parents and child to embrace this new life with hope and excitement.

Unexpected Courage screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo (山忌 黃衣小飛俠, Tsai Chia-Ying, (2025) [Fantasia 2025]

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There are some things you aren’t meant to see. Or at least, should you come across them, you should think better of it and be quietly on your way minding your own business. But unfortunately, curiosity got the better of the three hikers at the centre of Tsai Chia-Ying’s timeloop horror, Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo (山忌 黃衣小飛俠, shān jì huáng yì xiǎo fēi xiá) and now one of them’s trapped, forever living the same day over again and forced to watch his fiancée die in increasingly bizarre ways knowing he is unable to save her. 

To that extent, Tsai uses the time loop as a metaphor for grief in which the guilt-ridden Chia-ming (Jasper Liu) is psychologically unable to escape the mountain on which his friend, An-wei (Tsao Yu-ning), died. Five years later, he’s in a relationship with An-wei’s old girlfriend Yu-hsin (Angela Yuen)who was also on the mountain that day, but he can’t help feeling haunted by the spectre of An-wei and convinced that Yu-hsin would never have chosen him if An-wei were still alive. He worries that perhaps he didn’t try hard enough to save him knowing that he’d never have a shot at Yu-hsin with An-wei in the picture. He promised he’d get An-wei of the mountain, but in the end he left him there and in a way he’s still there too. 

This trip to the mountains seems to have been for closure. They’re still looking for An-wei’s body, but Chia-ming has a ring in his pocket and a question he’s too afraid to ask. He’s asked Yu-hsin to marry him before and she said no. He thinks it’s because she’s still hung up on An-wei, but in reality he’s the one who can’t let go and his insecurity is killing his current relationship. Repeatedly watching Yu-hsin die is a manifestation of his anxiety that she’ll never really be his, that he can’t keep or protect her, and that the only reason they’re together is because he betrayed An-wei. Yet the looping is also an expression of the way that his grief roots him in time. He literally can’t move forward and is forced to remember every day that his friend is gone. During his journey he eventually meets an older woman in a smilier position who says that she too finds each day repeating as she struggles to process the loss not only of her son who also went missing on the mountain, but of her husband, who was swallowed by his grief and ended up abandoning her in the same way that Chia-ming is unwittingly abandoning Yu-hsin.

But there are also ancient and arcane forces at work. All of this seems to have happened because An-wei broke a taboo and opened the door to the vengeful spirits of those who were killed by nature and claimed by the mountain. The mountain then becomes a place of death into which people disappear and leave those who love them lonely on the other side. The woman’s husband also felt that souls had become trapped here and wanted to free them while searching for his missing son, but as Chia-ming later discovers, though it may be possible to change the reality, it will come at a great cost and at least one sort of loss will have be to accepted before the mountain will release its grip.

Chia-ming makes his decision, but the outcome does rather have the effect of making his present life seem like a dream or thought experiment in which he imagined a future for himself in which his friend was no longer a romantic obstacle and then felt bad about it. He doesn’t really give Yu-hsin much of a say and makes (almost) all her decisions for her, never really knowing if one day she might have tired of An-wei and chosen him instead or if he could have resigned himself to loving her from afar. In the end, the only way he can free himself from this loop is to face the past with emotional honesty and reckon with his feelings along with his guilt and jealousy. The question is how much he really wants to leave the mountain or whether his obsession will eventually trap him there as just another “missing person” swallowed by grief and led astray by despair. 

Haunted Mountains: The Yellow Taboo screened as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Trailer (Traditional Chinese / English subtitles )

We Girls (向阳·花, Feng Xiaogang, 2025)

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Feng Xiaogang’s films often straddle and awkward line in which it’s not entirely clear whether he’s deliberately being subversive or only unwittingly. The surprising thing about We Girls (向阳·花, Xiàngyáng·huā) is, however, its contradictory attitudes towards the modern China of which one would not otherwise assume the censors would approve. Nevertheless, the true goal appears to be paying tribute to the prison and probation service which is thoughtful and compassionate, geared towards helping these unfortunate young women who’ve made “poor choices” to reform and become responsible members of society. 

But like many films of this nature, the problem is that the society the prison authorities want these women to “reform” into doesn’t exist. The onus is all on the women to change, while no attempts have been made to address the circumstances that led to them being sent to prison which are also the same circumstances they will be returning to. The women don’t appear to receive any additional education or learn any new skills while inside, and when they get out it’s impossible to find a mainstream job that will hire a woman with a criminal record. Consequently, they are forced into short-term, casual labour which is often exploitative while male employers withhold pay to extract sexual favours. 

Aside from praise for the police force, the film is also a celebration of female solidarity and it’s clear that their biggest enemy is entrenched misogyny and the patriarchal society. Yuexing (Zhao Liying) is forced into a marriage with a man who couldn’t work because of a physical disability. As he resented their daughter and gave her no help with childcare, Yuexing felt responsible when the baby experienced hearing loss after contracting meningitis and was determined to save for a cochlear implant. To earn more money, she became a cam girl but was caught and sent to prison for two years for obscenity. Mao Amei (Cheng Xiao), meanwhile, is an 18-year-old deaf-mute orphan exploited by criminal gang who are sort of like her “family” but force her to steal for them. 

Having learned a little sign language for her daughter, Yuxing becomes Mao Amei’s interpreter in prison, but the pair find things on the outside much more difficult than in. Apparently illiterate and unable to speak, Mao Amei cannot rent a place to stay and is caught breaking into an abandoned car. The police take pity and let her go, but also take most of the money she was given on her release. Yuexing, meanwhile, discovers her husband abandoned their daughter who is now in an orphanage but is unable to reclaim her without a stable income and permanent address. She finds a job as a hotel maid, but is falsely accused of thievery by a wealthy businessman on a power trip and subsequently fired for concealing her previous conviction. Realistically, the women have little option but to fall into criminality because there really are no other options. 

Still, they’re supported by a network of female solidarity from sympathetic corrections officer Deng Hong (Chuai Ni), herself a foundling raised by a policeman, to another young girl sent to prison for reselling exotic animals off the internet. Orphanhood is a persistent theme with China’s longtime child trafficking problem ticking away in the background. The gang of thieves is eventually exposed as running a baby farm to make up for the decline in their traditional line of work thanks to digitalisation. Yuexing is faced with an impossible decision when she discovers that a wealthy couple are keen to adopt her daughter and are prepared to buy her a cochlear implant right away, knowing that it would be wrong to deny her this “better life” but also that her child has been taken away from her because of her socio-economic marginalisation and husband’s indifference. 

It’s only thanks to the found family that emerges between the women because of their shared experiences that they are able to find a way through, while small acts of “foolish” kindness are later repaid in kind. To that extent, the resolution falls into the realms of fantasy as the women are saved by a deus ex machina rather than through finding a place for themselves within the contemporary society and “reforming” themselves in the way the prison service insists. In the end, they are only able to free themselves through an act of violence that comes with additional, though bearable, costs and grants them the possibility of making a new life for themselves if one spiritually and geographically still on the margins of the contemporary society.

Trailer (Simplified Chinese / English subtitles)

Deep in the Mountains (如意饭店, Li Yongyi, 2025)

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Such in the confusion in mid-90s China that the chaos has penetrated all the way to a remote village in Li Yongyi’s satirical farce Deep in the Mountains (如意饭店, rúyì fàndiàn). What begins as gritty Sino-noir soon turns into black comedy as the unfairly demoted policeman hero finds himself chasing a serial killer right into a traditional village community that seems to be home to some of the nation’s least astute people who are themselves caught between the old China and the New but also obsessed with their own status and petty vendettas.

The problems begin when middle-aged former detective Yao (Qiao Shan), now working as a vehicle checker after being demoted for chasing a woman he thought was a missing person while in his underpants which frightened her so much she ran into traffic, is knocked out by criminal mastermind Ge Wenyong (Wang Yanhui) and the pair are taken into custody by the current village chief’’s daughter. She hopes that by catching the “thief” before the public security representative she can secure her succession to the role. As such, she’s inclined to believe Ge Wenyong when he says that he caught Yao breaking into his restaurant while as Yao came out in search of his missing friend on his off hours, he doesn’t have anything on him that proves he works in law enforcement. The villagers’ inability to believe him signals their declining faith in the authorities, while Ge Wenyong signals the rise of the new merchant class which is in this case quite literally bludgeoning the workers to death. 

As a vehicle checker, Yao is immediately suspicious when one of the fog light caps he fitted on a now-missing lorry turns up on another one. The increasingly nervous driver tells him there’s an out of the way place where people sell parts from scrapped vehicles on the black market. Amid the economic reforms of the 90s as the nation transitioned away from the planned economy to a market one, many lost their jobs along with, at least as far as the film goes, their moral compass. Infected by greed, they climb over each other in search of material wealth. In some ways repentant lorry driver Yang is symbol of this newly materialistic impulse. His business went bust and he’s racked up massive debts which is why he ended up becoming a long-distance lorry driver. Even if his gift of pretty white shoes for his wife hints at this new consumerist society in their frivolity, the fact that Yang is dying of pancreatic cancer suggest that he too has been poisoned by the corrupting influence of capitalism. Now his only wish is to clear his debts so that his wife and daughter won’t be burdened by them when he’s gone. 

There are a series of family photos that appear in the film besides the one that Yang keeps in his lorry beginning with the wedding photo which is dramatically shattered in the opening sequence. The “missing” woman we’re first introduced to is perhaps of this new China and looking for a more modern “freedom” in fleeing an abusive marriage to a man who tells the police that he didn’t hit her “that hard”. But unfortunately, she ends up running into Ge Wenyong who takes her prisoner and forces her to be a tool in his dark and exploitative criminal enterprise which involves knocking off lorry drivers and stealing their vehicles which are often carrying new consumerist goods such as televisions and video players. Yet, suave and manipulative, he manages to convince the villagers that he is actually an undercover public security agent while Yao is just a thief. 

Meanwhile, they squabble amongst themselves while ironically preparing to accept an award as a “civilised advanced village”. The title cards at the end of the film assure us they were all punished too for “obstructing official duties, picking quarrels and provoking troubles”, though they are perhaps symptomatic of the problems of the old China, which have not exactly gone away, in their petty politicking at the expense of the people they’re supposed to be protecting. Yao, however, is redeemed by solving the case, if not without a few casualties, and is rewarded with reinstatement as a detective. He continues to be plagued by anxiety about the “missing persons” of China’s transitionary period as a representative of an authority almost certainly a little less benevolent than it’s being made out to be if also positioned as the only real force of resistance towards the rise of rampant capitalism and heartless “entrepreneurs” like Ge Wenyong.

Deep in the Mountains screened as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Organ Child (器子, Chieh Shueh Bin, 2024)

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How far would a father go for his daughter? There’s an ironic duality at the centre of Organ Child (器子, qìzǐ) in that the vengeful man at its centre and the man he is chasing are basically the same and may have made the same choices were the situation reversed. Nevertheless, a terrible and morally indefensible crime has taken place which will lead to many more of the same as bereaved father Qi-mao (Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan) stealthily tracks down all those who stole his newborn daughter and sold her to an organ trafficking ring. 

The film is keen to paint Qi-mao as a figure of uncompromised fatherhood through his association with a group of orphaned boys. Working as a baseball coach at the orphanage, he becomes a surrogate father to them and provides a familial environment as he and his wife frequently invite the boys for dinner. When his daughter is born, she automatically gets a whole baseball team of overprotective brothers, but that doesn’t stop her being snatched one day when her mother turns her back for an instant to pick up her bottle. The more Qi-mao searches for his daughter, the more he becomes convinced that she was stolen to order and the hospital is somehow involved. After getting too close to the truth, he’s framed for murder and sent to prison for 18 years during which he plans his bloody revenge.

What he uncovers is a vast ring of human trafficking run through the dark web in which rich people can buy poor ones and harvest their organs to save those they love rather than waiting for a good candidate to present themselves. This is apparently what filthy rich businessman Xu did when his newborn daughter needed a heart, so Qi-mao is led to believe his daughter must be dead but is after answers and the location of her body more than to expose the network which appears deeply entrenched among the elite because it so very lucrative. Yet if Qi-mao is going to all this trouble now, perhaps he may have done the same as Xu if the situation were reversed. He appears blasé about putting other people’s children in danger while torturing their parents to get to the truth even if as it turns out he may not have actually intended to harm them. Just like him desperate to save their child, the parents largely give in when they are threatened and promise to tell him everything he wants to know if only he let them go. 

But there is something quite insidious in Xu’s plan given that it may be one thing to buy a living body off a website and never have to think about the person whose life will sacrificed, but quite another to be prepared to kill someone that trusts and loves you. Xu uses his money to employ a poor yet oblivious family while collaborating with a hospital to fake medical records and manipulate his daughter Qiao who thinks the biggest problem in her life is her forbidden romance with the son of one of their servants, again echoing the class divide that makes Xu think he can do what he likes with those he feels to be lesser than himself. The real “family” turns out to be that created by the orphans which is then spread to the younger generation who are eventually freed from their parents’ corruption and the boundaries of class to live in a freer world less bound by capitalistic imperative than simple solidarity. 

But for all that, Qi-mao is orphaned too in realising that even if his daughter were alive and he could still save her, she likely wouldn’t accept the man he’s become. Qi-mao is man of rage and vengeance. He brutally tortures those connected with his daughter’s disappearance and commits acts of heinous violence that render him unable to return to mainstream society despite his position as an idealised father figure to the orphan boys. A subplot about sexual abuse at the orphanage is under explored, but hints at the institutionalised corruption in which the powerless can be exploited by those in power when no one cares enough to stop them. Qi-mao may not really care that much about opposing the system, but certainly does about the boys and his missing daughter as he wades into hell in search of answers but also retribution. 

Organ Child screens 27th July as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Dirty Ho (爛頭何, Lau Kar-leung, 1979)

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A prince in hiding develops a fondness for a bumbling jewel thief in Lau Kar-leung’s anarchic kung fu comedy, Dirty Ho (爛頭何). The English title is apparently intended as a Dirty Harry reference, though the film obviously has nothing at all to do with the Don Siegel procedural, the Chinese meaning something like “rotten head Ho”, and is in effect a homoerotic buddy movie as the various power balances begin to shift between the two men until they come to function in perfect synchronicity almost in fact as one.

The film opens, however, with a dispute over courtesans and a game of one-upmanship between prince in disguise Wang (Gordon Liu) and cocky jewel thief Ho (Wong Yue). The pair promise ever greater sums of riches in return for female company, eventually ending up in a fight interrupted when the police are called about some stolen treasure. However, at the last second, Wang says both the treasure chests are his and that he is a legitimate jewel seller from Beijing. He saves Ho from arrest, but also takes the stolen treasure chest with him, ensuring Ho will later return to take it back.

Why Wang takes a liking to him isn’t really clear, but even in his clumsy martial arts skills he seems to see something that could be polished if only he could turn him into an upright citizen. He does this partly by means of trickery, injuring Ho on the head with a poisoned sword and then promising him the antidote but only if he agrees to become his disciple and do exactly as he says. For the rest of the film, Ho wears a large black plaster on his head that slowly decreases in size as he begins to reform under Wang’s tutelage. But the power dynamic between them later shifts when Wang is injured and has to use a wheelchair with Ho now dependent on him for care and protection. 

What emerges between them is strangely like a marriage while the two of them are later accosted by the “Seven Agonies” led by a very effeminate man who also causes Ho to take on a camp persona until actively rejecting it. No one is really quite as they seem, Wang actually a prince in disguise hiding out from his 13 brothers, and in particular the fourth one, who really want him dead so they can inherit the kingdom. In true martial arts fashion, Wang isn’t interested in the throne, fame, or fortune, but rather than a commitment to resisting oppression simply wants to be free to enjoy the finer things in life like art, antiques, and strong liquor. 

Meanwhile, the two are also attacked by a gang of bandits faking disabilities and Wang at one point tries to pass off one of the concubines as his bodyguard to conceal the extent of his martial arts skills. Reuniting with Gordon Liu after 36th Chamber of Shaolin, Lau’s choreography has a playful, slapstick sensibility such as in the ongoing duel of swapped tankards with one of the assassins. The hand movements are fast and precise, a maze and flurry of moment culminating in the final showdown with Lo Lieh’s enemy general in which the two men are so perfectly in tune that they move almost as one. 

Lau stages an increasingly surreal sequence of events, including the pair sheltering under umbrellas in the middle of a dilapidated town while targeted by assassins hired by Wang’s brother, but ends in curiously ambiguous fashion with the matter of the court unresolved despite Wang’s desire to live freely as he chooses. Of course, a prince he is but Wang is also constrained by his social status in much the same way Ho is prevented from living his authentic life because of the obligations entailed with being a potential heir to the throne. Meanwhile, it seems the king is doddery and has unwittingly created a vacuum which has pit his 14 sons against each other, destabilising the society in the process. Not wanting the job actually makes Wang an ideal candidate though, he’d have to survive all the assassination attempts first. A riot of colour and witty humour, the film boats some of Lau’s most intricate choreography performed by two actors at the top of their game who are perfectly primed to bounce of each other in a humorous back and for between the shifting sands of master and pupil.

Daughter’s Daughter (女兒的女兒, Huang Xi, 2024)

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Never having fully dealt with the trauma of her teenage pregnancy and decision to give her child up to be raised by a family friend, 64-year-old divorcee Jin Ai-xia (Sylvia Chang Ai-chia) finds herself in an eerily similar position on on learning that the daughter she raised in Taiwan has been killed in a car accident in New York where she was receiving fertility treatment. The process resulted in a healthy embryo of which Ai-xia now finds herself the “guardian”. She is given four options, keep the embryo in storage and pay to renew the contract when it runs out, find a surrogate to carry to it term, donate it to another couple, or have it destroyed.

The fact that there are eight months left on the contract that her daughter Zuer (Eugenie Liu Yi-er) signed makes this almost another pregnancy which Ai-xia must decide whether or not to continue. Keeping the embryo in storage only defers the decision and traps it in the same mental space in which Ai-xia thinks of Emma (Karena Lam), the daughter she did not raise and tried to put out of her mind. In its consideration of motherhood, the film does shy away from suggesting that it is a kind of burden and requires sacrifice whether willing or not. Later confronted, if gently, by Emma who has unbeknownst to her become a single mother who chose to keep her child, Ai-xia justifies herself that she was 16 and afraid. Most of all, she was afraid the baby would trap her in New York’s Chinatown and that her life would never change after that. She wanted more, so she went along with her mother’s proposed solution of giving her daughter to a childless couple to raise while she returned to Taiwan and never looked back.

Yet it’s Emma who seems to haunt her while she’s in New York trying to sort out Zuer’s affairs while mired in her grief. It’s clear that she feels that she failed both her daughters as her unresolved trauma over separating from Emma left her unable to fully bond with Zuer whom she raised at arms’ length. When Zuer and her same-sex partner Jia-yi (Tracy Chou Tsai-shih) decide to have a child, Ai-xia is against it. It seems there may be some lingering prejudice in her about their relationship as she tells Zuer that the baby won’t be able to explain their family situation, but it’s also partly that she doesn’t want her to be trapped by motherhood as she felt herself to be. She asks her why she and Jia-yi don’t just enjoy their life together rather than complicate with a child. Ai-xia tells Emma that she wanted to live her own life, while expressing the same desire now that she has become a second mother to her own mother, Yan-hua (Ma Ting-Ni), who is living with dementia. Once her mother passes away, she’s looking forward to enjoying her freedom for once. 

Ai-xia rails that no one ever really considered her feelings and that she’s been given this burden without ever really being given an opportunity to ask herself if she wanted it. There’s a minor irony in Yun-hua’s segueing back into the past to tell the 64-year-old Ai-xia that she can’t raise a child at this age as if she were still a pregnant 16-year-old. As an older woman, she reflects that Yun-hua probably didn’t make that decision solely because she was embarrassed by the stigma of teenage pregnancy but genuinely thought it was best for both her daughter and her granddaughter. But now Ai-xia is facing the same choice at the other end of her life knowing that if she chooses to raise Zuer’s baby she may not live long enough to see it to adulthood, nor may she have the energy to look after a small child even if she has the time. 

But Ai-xia carries Zuer’s ashes around with her holding them in front of her belly as if they were the embryo and she were already carrying it. Placing the square black container on the airport scanner and watching it travel through the tunnel is oddly like an act of rebirth. Attempting to come to terms with her own complicated maternity, she thrashes out the past with Emma but also really with herself in trying to decide whether or not to continue this maternal legacy despite the sacrifices and compromises it entails. For her, motherhood becomes an act of self-forgiveness in which she learns to understand both her own mother and her daughters along with their shared connection in this ever-increasing line.

Daughter’s Daughter screens 18th July as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Trailer (English subtitles)

Nine-Ring Golden Dagger (挡马夺刀, Feng Xiaojun, 2024)

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The daughters of General Yang venture into Liao territory in search of their father’s famed “nine-ring nation stabilising sword” in Feng Xiaojun’s wuxia adventure, Nine-Ring Golden Dagger (挡马夺刀, dǎng. mǎ Set in the middle of the Song Dynasty, the film draws inspiration from the western in its dusty frontier town setting if also clearly from King Hu’s Dragon Inn in the design of its central staging post where a series of action set pieces take place.

Emperor Taizong has expelled the Khitan in the north and is intent on reclaiming the sixteen prefectures of Yan and Yun for the Han people. General Yang (Wu Yue) leads his men against the invading Liao while the Middle Army do nothing and wields his nine-ring nation stabilising golden sword but is cut down by Liao general Liu and his sword is captured as loot. Yangying, (Liu Shinlei) Yang’s ninth daughter, cannot stand the injustice and is determined to march into Liao and get it back. Her sister, Yanqi (Zhang Xintong), tries to stop her but then relents and decides to go with her instead. 

The sword is in the home of the South Prime Minister of Liao, Zhang Hua (Tan Kai), who is Han and resented by some of the Liao warriors for being a token hire designed to appeal to the Han population who they fear are taking over now they’ve joined the Liao. Though Dowager Empress Xiao is minded to make peace, General Liu and Zhang would rather the war continue because it facilities their advancement amid an otherwise rigidly hierarchical social system.

One expression of this is in hilarious comic relief character Xiao Pusage (You Xianchao) who has a long and pointless intro he’s fond of reciting that explains he’s the Dowager Empress’ nephew. Jiao Guangpu (Song Tianshuo), owner of the staging post, was thinking about killing him but decides to let him go instead because they only kill evildoers and Pusage actually seems quite nice and enjoys doing good things like helping the poor. Jiao is also a former Song soldier trapped behind enemy lines without the resources to go home but dreaming of reclaiming Yang’s sword and taking it back with him. Nevertheless, he originally distrusts the Yang daughters believing them to be Liao soldiers and therefore his enemies. He too has a witty intro song in which he gives away his origins only no one seems to be paying attention. 

But in some ways, Jiao’s desire to reclaim the sword is more sentimental than that of the daughters even though part of the reason why they want it is to avenge the deaths of their father and brothers. Even so, their main mission is taking it back to stabilise the nation and symbolically end the war with Liao. Jiao, by contrast, wants it to fulfil an obligation he feels to General Yang who fought bravely in the film’s opening sequence but was executed by a cowardly arrow from Liu. After a botched attempt at assassination and an intense fight through the inn, the trio form an uneasy alliance and agree to travel back to Song together only to be continually frustrated by Liao forces who eventually have them surrounded at the staging post.

While the design may echo Dragon Inn, Feng uses the techniques of Peking Opera to stage the battle between Yangqi and Jiao while otherwise echoing the western through the newspaper-like onscreen text and dusty frontier sensibility as the Yang sisters make their way back to the border with their father’s sword in hand. Through somewhat epic in scope despite its compact runtime, the film is essentially structured around a series of action sequences from the daring raid to retrieve the sword with its various booby traps to a chase through a cornfield and the final confrontation at the inn. Each is impressively choreographed and expertly performed to make full use of the well-designed sets and meagre budget. The lean, mean feel and linear progression also add to the retro sensibility while there’s something undeniably satisfying about seeing these two rather slight women run rings around the Liao forces thanks to the training they received from their father as they become the inheritors of his legacy and saviours of Song by retrieving the sword and ushering in a new era of peace and coexistence.

Nine-Ring Golden Dagger is released Digitally in the US on July 1st courtesy of Well Go USA.

Trailer (English subtitles)

The Black Tavern (黑店, Teddy Yip Wing-Cho, 1972)

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One of the reasons that martial arts films are so popular is that it’s often easy to tell who is good and who is bad. In general, the just hero vanquishes the source of evil and corruption, thereby restoring a sense of moral order to a world that may in other ways be chaotic. But chaotic is probably the best way to describe the world of The Black Tavern (黑店) in which the titular inn becomes a nexus of greed and villainy where it is impossible to tell who, if anyone, is good, while almost everyone is actually bad and the heroine only really intervenes in the closing scenes.

One way you can tell that something is very rotten at the Gao Family Inn is that the cook suddenly emerges from a pit underground carrying someone’s leg, which he then chops up and uses to make buns. No one ever mentions this again. It’s a just symbol of how corrupt and hellish this world has become. The inn is apparently the only staging post on this route, which is presumably how they continue to get custom despite bumping off their guests, taking all their stuff, and then chopping them up to put in buns to serve to the next unfortunate person who arrives in search of a bed for the night. 

But the reason so many venal bandits are drawn here is that a beggar monk (Dean Shek) tells them he saw vast riches fall out of a chest belonging to Hai Gangfeng, a former official returning to his home province with all his ill-gotten gains from accepting bribes. Assuming Gangfeng will be stopping at the inn, everyone who heard the monk is on their way there. Only, as it turns out, the man we thought was Hai Gangfeng is actually a bandit, “Whipmaster” Zheng Shoushan (Ku Feng), who cunningly pretended to be him to take over the inn and wait for the real Gangfeng’s arrival. He does not, however, seem to have anticipated so many other bandit gangs each more outlandish than the last having the same idea.

One turns up with a band of hopping vampires who turn out to be crooks in disguise, while another is wearing a horned helmet that gets stuck in things when he’s trying to fight. Of course, they’re all trying to kill each other so they can be the ones in control when Gangfeng finally arrives. What they don’t realise is that the whole thing’s a honeytrap designed to lure them all to the inn for just this purpose, so that they’ll all kill each other and spare the forces of justice some trouble. Those would be Zhang Caibing (Shih Szu), a disciple of the Lady Hermit making this a kind of extended universe film of the Cheng Pei-Pei classic. Continuing her mentor’s mission, she’s out to skim off the “scum of the martial arts world,” explaining to Shoushan that if he doesn’t like it, he should have thought of that before committing so many “evil deeds”. 

On the other hand, Caibing does seem to be enjoying this quite a lot so perhaps she’s not quite so entitled to the moral high ground as she’d like to think. While taking a leaf out of King Hu’s book, Yip adds an edge of slapstick absurdity in setting up elaborate action sequences with well-deserved pay offs and indulging in goreless yet extreme kills such as a series of surprise decapitations. Shoushan’s bladed whip becomes a versatile weapon but also an extension of his character in his cowardliness and lack of morality. It’s only really any good at long range, which means that he keeps his opponents at arms’ length rather than confront them directly as in the typical tests of skill that define a martial arts battle. He coils it around their necks, snake-like, then either pops their heads off or strangles them to death. Just like the innkeeper he killed off at the start, he seems to have genuine affection for his female companions but eventually meets a similar fate as his trademark whip is ironically turned against him. 

There’s also a genuine, if underplayed, sense of ambiguity in the attraction between the mysterious swordsman (Tung Li ) and Shoushan’s daughter that prevents him from killing her while suggesting that he too was on some level attracted to banditry. Even if he rides off in the end with Caibing, it does not appear that their relationship is romantic. Nor is he allowed to claim victory by swooping in when all seemed lost for Caibing during the final fight, immediately encountering difficulty with Shoushan who puts up a good fight that again seems contrary to his moral character in the amount of skill and effort needed to beat him. Indeed, it often seems as if he will win after all. This world will fall to men like him and turn into one giant Black Tavern. In the end, it’s a team effort that takes him down, including the strange intrusion of the beggar monk who was after all the person who started all this by repeating the rumour in the last rest stop and may or may not actually be working with Caibing. In any case, the incredibly fast-paced action sequences and the dark humour that accompanies them lend the film an epic quality despite its tight duration along with an ironic kind of cynicism that insists this world is simply too silly to be evil but that the scum of the martial arts world will pay all the same.

The Black Tavern screened as part of this year’s Focus Hong Kong.