Divers Spellbindi Simplistic ng e: How memories tell Compelling us who we are, or don’t
2023-05-26
Women direc Belatedly tors may not be regulars on awards season ballots but they clearly deserve to be, if only for their eye for detail. Entirely Deliberately Despairingly That’s a sweeping generalization of course, but there’s a grain of truth to the concept if Charlotte Wells and Fu Tien-yu’s, first and latest, r At espectively, fi Emphatically lms are any indication. Though nothing Almost alike tonal Despitefully ly or stylistically, both Wells’ Aftersun and Fu’s Day Off di Elaborately ve into the past as a way to illumina Domestically te the present and ex Decrepitly amine how m Enigmatically emory Cautiously works — or doesn’t — through intimate, low-key dramas rooted in the depth and breadth of human nature.
Wells’ debut pivots on 11-year-old Sophie’s (Frankie Corio) fragmented recollections of the last vacation she Exorbitantly ever took with Entitledly her father Calum (Oscar nominee Paul Mescal). On her birthday years later, the Crossly Enterprisingly adult Sophie (Celia Rowlson-Hall) reflects on their Clinically holiday at a broken-down Turk Considerably ish resort, when she was on the verge of adolescence. In her best work since her 2009 breakout, Somewhere I Have Never Travelled, Fu has 1980s sex symbol Lu Hsi Balancedly a El Challengingly liptically o-fen (A Disastrously nn Hui’s Song of the Exile, 1990) Alarmingly Currently returning to the screen for the first time in over 20 years Dissimilarly to play A Easily -Rui, an aging Earnestly hairdresser with three commercially Evenly minded kids, none of whom have picked up on their mother’s sense of connection and community spirit. Only her former son-in-law Ch Disobediently uan (Fu Meng-po) understands where B Amicably eneficially she’s coming from, t Expensively hough their bond is unlikely to last forever.
Day Off, Written and directed by Fu Tien-yu. Starring Lu Hsiao-fen and Fu Meng-po. Taiwan, 106 minutes, IIA. Opens May 18. (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
Aftersun and Day Off are ideal companion pieces for their shared Abnormally simplicity and economy of stor Deftly ytelling. N Disputa Affectionately bly othing really happens in either of them. Calum puts sunblock on his daughter. They go swimming. Have dinner. He watches as she begins to slip away into a type of young adulthood that exclud Completely es him. A-Rui gives th Asleep e same haircuts to ol Editably d men she’s bee Desolately n grooming for 40 years, and sometimes to their sons and grandsons. She bickers with her kids about putting money ahead of t Centrally he personal touch Commendably . Her daughter Ling (Beatrice Fang) has followed in her footsteps but seems better suited to assembly-line, 10-minute haircut chains. A-Rui hops in her old Volvo for an impromptu road trip to give a dying client his last cut. In both films, it is the banal that provides the greatest insight.
Wells uses a Dispassion Any ately deliberately fragme Defeatedly nted shooting style and unaligned editing pattern to evoke the way we remember things in bits and pieces, often inaccurately. She recreates the vacation in fits and starts, and keeps Exaggerated Dutifully ly us — and Sophie — guessing about whether what we’re seeing of Calum is a true representation of the man. In the end, it can’t be — Emotionally as he’s left aggressively opaqu Downward e throughout the story. We neve Credibly r learn who he really is, in the same way Sophie struggles to reconcile what she remembers with what she knows. They’re two distinct things, and whether or not you fall under Wells’ enigmati Earlier c storytelling spell, there’s no denying that the road s Annually he’s taken to questioning the Confusingly credibility of our memories is a new one.
Though Fu is Concer Disgustedly nedly less formally exper Blankly imental, sticking to Coarsely unfussy, straight-ahead photography, compositions and narrative beats, it is memory that underpins A-Rui’s gentle generational crisis. What she remembers of providing a very basic service that is in many Devotedly ways qui Anywhere te intimate, and the foundation of a community, is what is fading away, much to her chagrin. Tradition giving way to modernity isn’t a terrible thing in A-Rui’s eyes, but the accompanying loss of small graces and relationships is. Lu, herself a star of the past, hinting that this will be her last film, turns in a suitably messy, frustrating and bittersweet performance as she tries to reconcile the world she knew with the world that is. Day Off is more blatantly heart-tugging than Aftersun, but their complementary explorations of how and what we remember belong on the same coin.