Little Big Women

With the tradition and Chinese culture this movie performed it impeccably. Taiwan is one of the countries with strong family value and love surround between people. Mainland China cannot make this kind of movie as their product is always overdramatic, hk and Singapore won't have this background support and will become lame for this topic and always commercial kind. This movie just so natural and telling a story in a woman family. It just full of love and tears from this movie, if you have connection with any Taiwanese and been in their culture, you will like it.

It was like a glass of wine that I was not hurry to drink but just watching it slowly filled up. At first, I just felt a little bitter in my throat but then it had a powerful aftereffect which made my rims of eyes red with unstoppable grievances, sadness and tears. Everyone had different memory about the past and as time past by, only the true emotion and feeling were left. At the same time, these emotion and feeling were so individual that they crashed into each other. The heroine was an aggrieved woman and she was also a strong mother. She decided to vanish all those love and hatred deep inside her heart at her husband's funeral without attendance. But her grievances have landed in my mind. Although this story ended in harmonious had some ridiculous plots, it was exactly the blandness and doughtiness that the heroine showed during her life, the contradiction and harmony in this little family, the perfect performance of the leading actress, and all the just-right and full emotion, made this sincere film so addicted.

When an absent father dies, his daughters clash with their mother.

A family drama in Taiwan, far from the canons we're used to by Hollywood studios.

I am more and more attracted to slow-burners like this one, where we are treated, little by little, with the elements that build the narrative, in a very intelligent way.

The way it's structured allows the viewer to change their opinion about the developments that they see on screen, and to root for different characters, as the story unfolds.

It's mainly about reflection, morality and rigidity of tradition, and being at peace, on a personal level, and then with others, and letting life take the course it is supposed to.

The recurring flashbacks can be confusing sometimes, without the proper context.

There's no jaw-dropping twists, just surprises, that I personally liked. The final scenes are undoubtedly the highlight of the film, and well worth the wait.

I have to wholeheartedly compliment reviewer blaze32646 February 2021 for his/her "A slow moving film about letting go" review; a rare great in-depth analysis of how it should have been done more properly and why it's a huge miss of making this movie a greater and better movie.

The movie didn't completely tell the backstory of why that husband/father had become estranged to his wife/daughters, why the wife/mother still gave a damn to her betrayed/estranged husband and as a husband/father. it also failed to show us how this woman had been forced into a single parent mother, how his betrayal, his heartless cruelty impact the family he left behind. What's the reason he betrayed his wife/daughters? An adulterer for another woman? If so, can you believe this wife-by-marriage would forgive him? Schopenhauer On "Woman" claimed that Woman in Love is far weaker than woman in Hate; a woman in love and hate is far barbaric than most men. There's no way to correct such fact that this Mamma San in particular had evolved and transcended to a kinder and more generous female.

Therefore, once her persistence of carrying out the farewell ritual to her husband is quite obscure and argumentatively controversial, this movie could only have achieved a small part of a bigger picture. But nonetheless, still a not so bad nor so great or so unique movie.

Joseph Chen-chieh Hsu illustrates an important message about the importance of moving on against the luscious beauty that is Tainan, Taiwan. Unfortunately poor pacing and under whelming drama prevents the film from hitting hard.

On her 70th Birthday, Lin Xiuying (Played by Shu-Fang Chen) makes grand birthday celebrations that quickly transform into funeral plans when her estranged husband who she has not seen in over a decade passes away. Without hesitation as a traditional Hoklo woman, she plans her husbands mourning and funeral grudgingly. The rest delves into her emotions over her husband and the reality of her actual feelings.

To my understanding, this is Hsu's debut feature film which went on to be last year's highest grossing film in Taiwan, which for a regional language film is surprising. You feel the deep passionate love for his country, especially Tainan. Temples, streets, markets, seashores, restaurants are all vividly displayed with their colors complimenting them on screen. The audio, while appearing rather minimally, usually knows how to hit the emotions just right. Much of the natural sounds like deep-frying, traffic, and the clicking of heels on the floor, provide a rather pleasant experience on the ears, almost transporting you there.

I applaud the cast a lot, its rare to see a film almost exclusively led by women, that to directed by a man. Everyone's acting most notably Shu-Fang Chen and Ying-Hsuan Hsieh were extremely well done.

Sadly what didn't work for the film was the lack of overall connectivity, and the lack of backstory that could have help me connect with Lin and why it was so hard to let go. There is a lack of heart wrenching emotional events that make us want to strongly empathize with her or her daughters.

Overall, its not a terrible film. Hsu has an essay about the importance of letting go that becomes apparent in the end. Unfortunately, it could have been amplified with better on screen management of events, possibly more focus on the matriarchy and less of the daughters.