Chinese

LEFT-HANDED GIRL: a family’s path to to catharsis

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Photo caption: Shi-Yua Ma in LEFT-HANDED GIRL. Courtesy of Netflix.

In the wonderful family dramedy Left-Handed Girl, a family moves back to Tapei. The single mom Shu-Fen (Janet Tsai) opens a noodle stand in a boisterous night market. The teen daughter I-Ann (Shi-Yua Ma) takes a job in a very dodgy betel shop. The five-year-old daughter I-Jing (Nina Ye) starts kindergarten and finds adventure zipping around the night market on her own. Shu-Fen, the mom, is exhausted all the time, and we learn that she’s experiencing grief and shame, too. Each of the three independently faces her own deeply stressful situation, until the revelation of a family secret, in the most awkward of circumstances, brings catharsis.

The extended family lives in Taipei, but offer little support. Shu-Fen’s adult sisters all bicker, Grandma makes international runs for a trafficker, and the grumpy Grandpa insists that I-Jing’s lefthandedness is the work of the devil. (I-Jing takes Grandpa seriously, and unwelcome results ensue.)

All of the angst is leavened with humor, and there are lots of laughs in Left-Handed Girl. The extended family is funny, as is Johnny (Brando Huang), the good-hearted, goofy owner of the gadget stand in the market, who is sweet on Shu-Fen. And there’s Goo-Goo, an unexpected mammal in the story, which I will not spoil.

You may not have heard of Left-Handed Girl’s director, Shih-Ching Tsou, but you’ve seen her work. She met Sean Baker in film editing class, and the two have since collaborated as filmmaking partners. They co-directed their first film, she produced his Starlet, Tangerine, The Florida Project and Red Rocket, and Baker and Tsou co-wrote Left-Handed Girl.

Left-Handed Girl brings us a slice of working class life in urban Taiwan, and family foibles that we all recognize. It also is a pointed critique of traditional gender roles in Taiwan. Although everybody except the grandpa wants to move on from the old-fashioned superstition about left-handedness, they’re all obsessed with saving face and marrying off the daughters so the generational wealth can pass to the son.

The child actor Nina Ye is adorable, and all the is acting excellent. Shi-Yua Ma is superb as what we first see as just a selfish, surly teen, but who grows into a much more complicated character as the story evolves.

Left-Handed Girl is a triumphant directorial debut for Shih-Ching Tsou, and one of the Best Movies of 2025 – So Far. It is streaming on Netflix.

CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: China evolves, she persists

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Photo caption: Tao Zhao in CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: Photo courtesy of Janus Films.

Sweeping over decades of modern Chinese history, the auteur Jia Zhangke’s Caught by the Tides reveals profound changes in Chinese society by implanting a personal story within an epic sweep. Writer-director Jia has built Caught by the Tides from footage shot over the 21 years as he made other movies. In a tour de force, actress Tao Zhao delivers an exquisite portrait of resilience.

The plot is deceptively straight-forward, tracing the 21-year arc of the relationship between Qiaoqiao (Tao Zhao) and her shady boyfriend Bin (Zhubin Li). He moves away to find a better financial opportunity, promising to send for her when he’s settled. But he ghosts her, and she heads off to track him down. This simple story is embedded in a portrait of a changing China over the 21-years, with Jia’s clear-eyed observation of the changes and their impacts on regular people.

Neither Qiaoqiao or Bin can affect the course of China’s evolution (they are caught by the tides), but both seek to find their place it in.

Tao Zhao and Zhubin Li in CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: Photo courtesy of Janus Films.

This is a China that we rarely see, real Chinese (and I mean hundreds of non-professional actors) doing their jobs and entertaining themselves, in cities most of us Westerners haven’t heard of. In what amounts to one dreamy 111-minute montage, Jia presents scores of vignettes . We see retired miners tipping female singers, river travel on boats large and small, a small Christian worship service, mass jogging, an adage-spouting supermarket robot, and a most unlikely TikTok star. The stream of scenes never feels disjointed or boring because the continuity of human experience is so authentic and so novel.

The story begins in 2001 in Datong, a dreary coal mining city in Northern China, a gritty place where no building seems to have been repainted for decades. By 2006, when the story moves to Fenjie City, China is ALL IN on economic development, and corruption is rampart, as everybody seeks a slice of the action; the Chinese government relocated 1.1 million people, sacrificing their homes for the economic payoff of the Three Gorges dam. and Jia shows us the human impact. In 2022, the story moves to Zuhai City near Guadong and back to Datong; despite the COVID pandemic, the new widespread prosperity is jarring, and even Datong has become vibrant.

Tao Zhao in CAUGHT BY THE TIDES: Photo courtesy of Janus Films.

Jia is one of the world’s best filmmakers; I rated his Ash Is the Purest White as one of the best films of 2019. In Caught by the Tides, as in most of his films, he benefits from the collaboration with one of the world’s most compelling screen actresses, his wife Tao Zhao. Remarkably, Tao dominates Caught by the Tides without speaking any dialogue. Her character Qiaoqiao isn’t mute or even passive; she has plenty to say but she’s able to communicate, even forcefully, with her face. Qiaoqiao isn’t able to get everything to go her way, but the sound she makes in the final second of Caught by the Tides makes it clear that she’s living life on her terms. It’s an indelible performance.

Caught by the Tides is the best movie of 2025 so far and the best Chinese art film I’ve ever seen.

SILENT SPARKS: but weren’t they cellmates?

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Photo caption: Guan-Zhi Huang and Ming-Shuai Shih in SILENT SPARKS. Courtesy of Cinequest.

In the Taiwanese neo-noir Silent Sparks, small time hood Pua (Guan-Zhi Huang) is released from prison and checks in with the local crime lord (Chih-Wei Cheng). The boss assigns him to a lieutenant, Mi-Ji (Ming-Shuai Shih), who happens to be Pua’s former cell-mate. But when Pua and Mi-Ji meet again, the encounter is a study in social awkwardness. Pua just wants to start earning money and working his way up in the syndicate, but Mi-Ji is surprisingly unhelpful.

Pua finally gets the chance to do some crime, and we wonder, will Pua get caught, or worse? And what explains Mi-Ji’s behavior toward Pua? As Silent Sparks smolders on, the risks escalate.

The lead actors are very good. Chih-Wei Cheng is very funny as the crusty, vulgar crime boss, who is full of joie de vivre. Jui-Chun Fan is exceptional as Pua’s mom.

Chih-Wei Cheng in SILENT SPARKS. Courtesy of Cinequest.
Jui-Chun Fan and Guan-Zhi Huang in SILENT SPARKS. Courtesy of Cinequest.

Silent Sparks is the first feature for writer-director Ping Chu, and it’s a promising debut. I screened Silent Sparks for its US premiere at Cinequest.

BANR: weaving together the lucid and the confused

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Sui Li and Baoqing Li in BANR. Courtesy of ShangJia Picture Film Culture.

The star in Banr is writer/director/editor Erica Xia-Hou’s innovative storytelling – in her first feature film. An elderly husband (Sui Li) is struggling to hold on to his wife (Baoqing Li) as she sinks into Alzheimer’s, with the support of their adult daughter (Xia-Hou herself). That main story is told in a cinéma vérité documentary style, but that’s just what the husband and daughter see in their lucidity. Those segments are interwoven with fragments of the wife’s memory and her delusions and dreams. In depicting the most ordinary daily activities, Xia-Hou keeps us continually off-guard by shifting the points of view between the clear-eyed and the muddled. 

With the exception of herself, Xia-Hou used all non-professional actors. Like Sean Baker at his best, she’s directed exemplary performances from her leads, both first-timers. As the wife, Baoqing Li becomes ever more confused, but is radiant when a cherished memory pops up.

Baoqing Li in BANR. Courtesy of ShangJia Picture Film Culture.

As the husband, Sui Li throws all his deep-seated love and his stubbornness into fighting his wife’s memory loss, and then in caregiving. We know, and his daughter wisely advises him, that his efforts are unsustainable, but he obstinately muddles on, until the progression of her condition gives him no other choice. His performance is fully committed and heartbreaking.

This may be Erica Xia-Hou’s directorial debut, but she has a substantial body of work as an actress, screenwriter, editor and art director in the Chinese film industry, after studying dance, broadcasting and acting at three Chinese universities. She co-wrote and acted in the Jackie Chan sci-fi action film Bleeding Steel. She will co-star with Tony Leung and  Olga Kurylenko in the upcoming action thriller Fox Hunt, which she also co-wrote and edited.

What’s with the film’s title? Banr is companion in Mandarin, and many older Chinese couples affectionately refer to each other as Lao Banr, meaning old companion.

Banr is an immersive film, filled with humanity, and an important directorial debut. I screened Banr for its world premiere at Slamdance, where it was one of my Must See picks.

Through March 7, 2025, you can stream Banr on the Slamdance Slamdance Channel. A 2025 Slamdance Film Festival Virtual Pass, which brings you Banr and almost all of my Slamdance recommendations, only costs $50.

Sui Li in BANR. Courtesy of ShangJia Picture Film Culture.

CINEJOY LAST SUNRISE: racing into darkness

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LAST SUNRISE

In the gripping Chinese sci-fi thriller Last Sunrise, we’re in a super-hi tech future, powered almost totally by solar energy – which doesn’t look as blissful as it sounds.  As befits a dystopian story, there’s a disaster, and this one is just about the worst one conceivable – the death of our Sun.

Wang Sun (Zhang Jue) is very serious astronomy nerd with no apparent non-scientific interests.   He doesn’t really know Wu Chen (Zhang Yue), although she lives in a neighboring apartment, and it doesn’t appear that she’s ever thought about anything profound.  When the catastrophe happens, the two are forced on the road together in a race for their lives.

Last Sunrise is real science fiction about a plausible (and inevitable) future occurrence, and it’s about real ideas.  This isn’t just blowing stuff up in space, which too often passes for sci-fi today.

Losing the sun is pretty bad – it gets dark, the temperature is plunging and humans are running out of oxygen.  There may be refuges, but there’s little remaining battery power to fuel people’s escapes.  Of course, it doesn’t take long for social order to break down.  Last Sunrise becomes a ticking bomb thriller as the couple tries to find a refuge in time.

Of course, with no sun lighting the earth and moon, it is very dark and many more stars are visible.  The f/x of the starry skies in Last Sunrise are glorious.

The two leads are appealing,  especially Zhang Yue, whose Wu Chen is revealed more and more as film goes on.

The life-and-death thriller is leavened by witty comments on the consumerist, hyper connected culture (pre-disaster).  There are very funny ongoing references to instant noodles.  And Wang Sun, who is a bit of a hermit, doesn’t appreciate how devoted he is to his digital assistant ILSA (not Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, just ILSA).

This is the first feature, an impressive debut, for director and co-writer Wen Ren.  Cinequest hosted the North American premiere of Last Sunrise, the sci-fi highlight of the festival and is streaming Small Time in CINEJOY through October 14.

LUCKY GRANDMA: tour de grouch

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Tsai Chin in LUCKY GRANDMA

In the indie comedy Lucky Grandma, an elderly woman resists leaving her apartment in New York City’s Chinatown to join her son’s family in the burbs, Her plan is to invest her savings on a wild night in a New Jersey casino, but she falls into an ill-gotten treasure, running afoul of a murderous Chinatown gang that wants their loot back.

Tsai Chin (the mother in The Joy Luck Club) plays Grandma as a crusty curmudgeon who believes that the best defense is always a good offense.

Hsiao-Yuan Ha, a massive Taiwanese-born (just under 6’7″) actor, is winning as Grandma’s amiable mercenary bodyguard.

Lucky Grandma is the first feature for Asian-American female filmmakers, director Sasie Sealy and her co-writer Angela Cheng.

There’s not that much to Lucky Grandma except for Tsai Chin’s tour de grouch performance and the Chinatown setting. Lucky Grandma is moderately entertaining and is streaming on Amazon.

THE WILD GOOSE LAKE: vivid nights in the underworld

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THE WILD GOOSE LAKE. Photo courtesy of Film Movement.

In the atmospheric neo-noir The Wild Goose Lake, Zenong Zhou (Ge Hu) is a small time hood who unintentionally kills a cop. He goes on the run in a downscale lakeside resort known as a lawless no mans zone. Not only is he hunted by hundreds of police, the local criminal gangs are chasing him, too, to collect the price on his head. A mysterious woman, Aiai Liu (Lun-mei Kwei), shows up and purports that she has been sent by his gang to help him escape.

As the double crosses mount, and Aiai Liu confesses that she has really been assigned to betray him, we wonder if she will. The two of them slink around the resort area, trying to lay low, until the gangs and the police converge for a climactic scene just before the satisfying epilogue.

THE WILD GOOSE LAKE. Photo courtesy of Film Movement.

Director Yi’nan Dian has delivered a beautifully and inventively shot film. We first see the femme fatale thru a plastic umbrella. Much of the action is at night, and the colors in those nighttime scenes are vivid, even sometimes breathtaking. I especially liked a brief shot of the locals line dancing with glow-in-the-dark shoes.

Visually, The Wild Goose Lake reminded me of Long Day’s Journey into Night, a Chinese film that made my Best Movies of 2019 along with Ash Is Purest White. Overall, The Wild Goose Lake‘s screenplay and performances keep it from being as good as those films, but its cinematography by Jingsong Dong matches up.

Liao Fan (Ash is Purest White) plays the cop commanding the man hunt. Fan doesn’t have much to do for most of the film except to calmly issue orders, but we’re glad he’s around for the final scene.

Even before the hunters close in on their prey, The Wild Goose Lake contains some very effective set pieces, including an in-service training for gang members on how to steal motorbikes and then a contest billed as the “Olympic games of theft“.

More of an art movie than a crime thriller, The Wild Goose Lake is a beautifully shot fable from China’s underworld. You can support San Francisco’s Roxie Theater by buying a ticket to stream The Wild Goose Lake from the Roxie Virtual Cinema.

ASH IS PUREST WHITE: a survivor’s journey

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Fan Liao and Tao Zhao in ASH IS PUREST WHITE

Ash Is Purest White is writer-director Zhangke Jia’s portrait of an unforgettable woman surviving betrayal, the crime world and the tidal waves of change in modern China, all embedded in a gangster neo-noir.

Qiao (Tao Zhao), is the tough and spirited girlfriend of the provincial jianghu gang leader Bin (Fan Liao). They are the big fish in their little pond, and they are relishing life. Then circumstances change – great and unperceived economic forces are enervating their hometown and a younger rival gang emerges. Qiao takes a heroic action with severe consequnces. When she re-emerges, she finds herself personally betrayed and unsupported. The seventeen-year span of Ash Is Purest White follows Qiao as she roams across China to rebuild her life. She is at times devastated but refuses to accept permanent defeat.

Tao Zhao in ASH IS PUREST WHITE

Tao Zhao is Jia’s wife and muse. Ash Is Purest White is a sweeping epic, and it is her movie. Her performance is a tour de force. Watch her portray Qiao’s confidence in the opening scenes, her resourcefulness and ingenious cons when she is dumped out on her own and the resolve that powers her quest. Fan Liao is also excellent as Bin.

As Qiao’s journey spans almost two decades and thousands of miles, we get insights into contemporary China. Jia’s China is a place where, when the coal industry plays out in one city, the government builds a new city for hundreds of thousands of people to movie into the oil industry. Economic forces sweep across China like flash floods that inundate and sudenly recede. Qiao rides these changes like a fishing bobber on the surface of a tsunami.

Tao Zhao in ASH IS PUREST WHITE

We are familiar with movies about the Mafia and yakuza, but Ash Is Purest White is a glimpse into jianghu – their Chinese equivalent.

Ash is Purest White is on my list of Best Movies of 2019, and it’s streaming on Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

THE FAREWELL: funny, heartfelt and authentic

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THE FAREWELL

In the heartfelt family dramedy The Farewell, Awkwafina plays Billi, a Chinese-American woman whose grandmother in China is diagnosed with a terminal illness. The Chinese wing of the family decides not to tell the grandmother the bad news, and opts to rush a wedding as a pretext to gather the extended family to say farewell. The American branch of the family is not OK with the deception, but goes along, in varying degrees of reluctance.

Writer-director Lulu Wang based the story on her own family, and opens the film with the title, “Based on an actual lie“.

Indeed, ALL of the family members are constantly telling lies to each other, mostly to avoid conflict or social awkwardness. Is the film’s central Big Lie to avoid unpleasantness? To foster denial? Or, as one uncle posits, to let the entire family absorb the burden of the grandmother’s illness?

Naturally, there’s all the usual forms of family conflict, enhanced – when the grandmother isn’t present – by the stress of grieving. When the grandmother IS present, we have all these very sad people acting artificially happy with ridiculous enthusiasm. The Japanese bride doesn’t understand Chinese, and her reactions to what’s going on are frequently hilarious.

Awkwafina is a tremendous talent; she’s very good here, but underutilized. She only gets one brief, emotionally powerful speech, and the role could have been written into an acting tour de force (like Virginia Madsen’s in Sideways). Too bad. The rest of the cast, especially Hong Lu as the pepper pot grandma, is excellent, too.

Still, this is a very funny and emotionally evocative film. The family dynamics in The Farewell are authentic and universal, and this is a sure-fire audience-pleaser.

LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT: memory of a doomed romance and an epic plunge into neo-noir

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Jue Huang in a scene from Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Photo by Bai Linghai, courtesy Kino Lorber.

In the singular Chinese neo-noir Long Day’s Journey Into Night, Luo (Jue Huang) embarks on a search to find the mysterious woman he dallied with twenty years before. As he follows the clues, he plunges into an atmospheric underworld of dripping darkness and people who don’t want to talk. Along the way, he encounters the sultry, down-on-her-luck floozy Wan Qiwen (Wei Tang), whose lethal, fedora-adorned boyfriend does not want to relinquish her to Luo’s quest.

After a low burn beginning, Luo’s search reaches its climax in a spectacular ONE-HOUR single shot. It’s nighttime and both the exteriors and interiors are lit to evoke a surreal world stained by noirish danger. The shot requires the camera to follow Luo and Wan Qiwen, together and separately, inside and outside, between various levels and twice past a nervous horse, all while other characters interact with them. It’s right up there with the magnificent shots in Children of Men, Goodfellas, Touch of Evil, The Secret in Their Eyes, Atonement, Gun Crazy and the one-shot film Victoria.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is the triumph of writer-director Bi Gan, who never forgets that he is telling his story in the medium of cinema. Long Day’s Journey Into Night is so atmospheric that sometime we feel the dankness of his set designs. Repeatedly, the richest of colors stand out against noirish backdrops. Wan Qiwen is unforgettable in her satiny emerald green dress, lit by Luo’s headlights as he tracks her by automobile in a dark tunnel. (Bi Gan has acknowledged his admiration for Wong Kar-wai, and Bi Gan has created a film as visually intoxicating as Wong Kar-wai’s.) Ban Gi used three directors of photography; the second cinematographer prepared the final shot for the third. There are recurring themes of spinning rooms, flooded floors and dripping ceilings, single flames and sparklers. The soundtrack centers on ambient sound, with very few musical cues.


Wei Tang, Yongzhong Chen in a scene from Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Photo by Liu Hongyu, courtesy Kino Lorber.

All of this enhances the story of Luo’s obsession with a doomed romance (and possibly more than one doomed romance). He can’t sure that what he hears is true – or even that what he sees is real. It’s a world filled with dissolute and murderous men and unreliable women. Luo asks a man, “Is that child yours?” and is answered, “She was a master story teller” (not a complement in this instance).

Bi Gan says, “It’s a film about memory”. Indeed, he has Luo say, “The difference between film and memories is that film is always false. They are composed of a series of scenes. But memories mix truth and lies. They appear and vanish before our eyes .”

That final shot is in 3D. Bi Gan says, “After the first part (in 2D), I wanted the film to take on a different texture. But I believe this three-dimensional feeling recalls that of our recollections of the past. Much more than 2D, anyway. 3D images are fake but they resemble our memories much more closely.”


Hong-Chi Lee in a scene from Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Photo by Liu Hongyu, courtesy Kino Lorber.

This film is entirely written by Bi Gan, with no apparent relationship to the identically-titled 1962 film of the Eugene O’Neill play, the famed four-hander with Katharine Hepburn, Ralph Richardson, Jason Robards and Dean Stockwell. The Mandarin title of Bi Gan’s film is literally Last Evenings On Earth, a title which came from a short story by Roberto Bolaño. Bi Gan just liked the title Long Day’s Journey into Night and thought that it fit the spirit of his film.

Long Day’s Journey Into Night is the biggest Chinese art house hit ever, and won an award at Cannes in 2018. It opens this weekend in the Bay Area.