Chang has got together a star studded cast: Angelika Lee Sinje ( 李心潔), Jospeh Chang (張孝全), Isabella Leong (梁洛施),, Lawrence Ko (柯宇綸) in a simple fairy tale of leaving home and growing up. Yet simplicity is never simple: it may hide certain complexities which may resonate in the lives of people on many levels: social, psychological, mind, heart, conventions, freedom, past and present.
As the film opens, we are shown a beautifully shot underwater sequence of a mermaid swimming freely from an undersea cave towards and then through a brightly lit vagina shaped opening towards the ocean and the voice over of Angelika, playing Jen, the mother two kids Yu-Mei and Yu Nan telling them the story of the mermaid leaving the cave towards the open sea far far away to an unknown destination, a ritual which she would perform every night as the two kids lay on her lap listening in rapt attention before their bedtime, something which Jen had to squeeze in time to do between attending to customers of a small noodle shop on Lyudao (綠島) (a tiny island off the east coast of Taiwan used by the Taiwanese government as a penal island for prisoners). Then we got a low angle shot of Yu Mei (Isabella), sitting alone on a rooftop water tank, her fingers full of red paint, looking up at the sky, thinking, reflecting about something or other.Then we are shown the two kids with their mother at a rock pool playing with little fishes and their mother Jen telling them that the fishes must return to the open ocean where they belong, despite the huge billows thundering in under a clear blue sky from the Taiwan Straits upon the beach on that tiny island. Then the screen switches back to Yu Mei painting: by throwing red paint on to her canvas with great force to form a pattern and then working on it, drawing small white spirals here and there on the blank spaces and then to a red hot love making scene with her boy-friend Hsiang (Joseph Chang) anxious of being caught breaking the rules just before the boxing match the following morning.
As the film progresses, we learn how Yu Mei is now a painter working in Taipei in love with the aspiring professional boxer Hsiang, trying hard to meet the expectation of his long dead sailor father and how each of the 3 protagonists has got problems with the past: Yu Mei can't forget her brother nor forgive her mother for taking just her only but not her brother Yu Nam (Lawrence Ko) when she left her bully of a husband for Taipei; Hsiang can't forget his need to be a good boxer to please his sailor father despite working hard to be one but never quite making it; Yu Nam,who is now working as a tour guide, can't forget how his father died during a typhoon whilst he was out of Lyudao in a pan-Taiwan Christian meeting as representative for Tai Tung and how after his mother left, his father burned all their personal belongings and urged him to receive education and make something of himself.
In the end, every one learned in their own way to resolve the problem posed by their past: Yu Mei found new meaning in having her own baby girl with Hsiang, Hsiang accepted the fact that he could never make it as a boxer despite his passion for boxing because he got a problem with his eyes and despite what his father told him to be and Yu Nan decided to reconcile with his long lost sister.
The acting by Angelika Lee as Jen is excellent: as a mother, she exudes motherly love and sensitivity. Isabella too is excellent first as angry artist and as Hsiang's understanding girlfriend whilst Lawrence Ko portrays well the kind of simple-minded and faithful Christian guy who is reasonably competent as a tour guide but is otherwise good at little else. Joseph Chang too makes the role of the failed boxer convincing and eventually learned to truly love.
It tells that in this film, the cinematoprapher must have spent lots of time figuring out the composition and lighting of the screen images which are uniformly good. I like the way Chang uses the image of the sea as the source of all lives, all love and to which everyone must eventually return: the sea caves and the story of the mermaid and little fishes swimming out into the perilous sea as the unifying image to tie up and to symbolize the growing up process of its various protagonists: Yu Mei and Hsiang took a bath together, Yu Nan sought his father drenched and pelted by rain during a typhoon and found sympathy first in the fellow cab grabber and then drowned himself in free alcohol offered him by the bar-tender and then fantasized about being surrounded by three young girls when in fact, he hasn't got a single girl friend and had to pour out his heart to the pastor of a derelict church: it was the sea which gave Yu Nan his livelihood as an eco-tourist guide; it was also the sea which took the life of Hsiang's father and finally, it was the story book of the little fish and the sea written and illustrated by Yu Mei which brought Yu Nan back to his long lost sister.
I also like the way Chang selected the little details of cinematic images to tell her story: the way Hsiang held Yu Mei's hand when told that she is pregnant, the way he shadow-boxed his sailor dad and threw him into the sea whilst fishing alone on an embankment which he frequented as a child, awaiting the return of his father; the way Yu Mei painted to reflect what's in her mind, the way she nearly lost her life chasing after her sketches, the way her mother held her in the boat journey for a new life during her escape from the prison of her marriage with a violent and illiterate husband, the way she showed how Yu Mei could not forget her past by drawing spiralling circles in her painting in her adult life the way she drew whilst still child and a whole host of other significant details all told in images rather than in words which marks Chang out as an outstanding director. With the way she tells her story, I'm quite sure this film will touch many hearts.
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