American Girl (美國女孩) is a slice-of-life drama that captures a short but turbulent period in the life of 13-year-old Fen (Caitlin Fang, 方郁婷), who is suddenly transplanted from Los Angeles to Taipei, where her father works, due to her mother’s cancer treatment.
The much hyped film was made available last week on Netflix after a strong Golden Horse showing last year: Fiona Roan Feng-i (阮鳳儀) won best new director, Fang claimed best new actor while the film won best cinematography and the Audience Choice Award.
The challenges of adapting to a new culture and its school system will resonate strongly with diaspora kids caught between both worlds. The details — from being hit by a teacher over bad test scores, to being called “American” by classmates and wolfing down banana floats at Swensen’s for a taste of home — are trips down memory lane.
Photo courtesy of iFilm
Meanwhile, the 2003 SARS epidemic looms, and the film puts great care into reconstructing the social and cultural atmosphere of Taiwan during that era. The story mirrors Roan’s real-life experiences, drawing from a period in her upbringing and her family’s relationship.
Even though they can speak Mandarin, Fen and her sister Ann encounter difficulties adapting to their new environs while dealing with their frazzled parents. It’s reverse culture shock for Fen, who already had to go through this process when they first moved to the US. She adapted well, becoming a straight-A student with a best friend who shares her passion for horse riding, and desperately wants to return to America. Whether simply going back will fix all her problems is something she has to grapple with.
Their mother Lily (Carena Lam, 林嘉欣) isn’t coping well with her illness, and it’s taking a toll on the family. She frequently brings up her possible death and seeks something to blame it on, while father Huay (Kaiser Chuang, 莊凱勛) is under pressure to provide a better living for his family. He cares for the children and tries to connect with them, but he barely knows them.
Photo courtesy of iFilm
Even though Fen is the main focus, she’s not the only one who is dealing with distress; the entire family is in turmoil as the adults are not well enough to keep their lives entirely together.
Lily and Huay have much to figure out as they’ve been living in separate countries, only reunited under unfortunate circumstances. They aren’t just relegated to the background as the protagonist finds her way; they’re given depth as flawed, complex characters, providing some genuinely happy moments for their kids during this unhappy time.
Huay and surprisingly mature Ann play vital roles too as they cope in their own ways, but Fen and Lily’s temperamental conflict is what makes the film.
Most of Fen’s frustrations are directed toward her mother, and she lashes out whenever Lily speaks about dying. While Fang won the acting award, Lam does a solid job portraying Lily, who isn’t the most sympathetic character. She resents her illness and her circumstances, especially Fen’s constant complaining about Taiwan and acting out. The two do share some poignant conversations that speak to gender roles in Asia, such as Lily wanting to be reborn as a man in the next life.
These nuances add much to the film, keeping it from becoming another feel-good, melodramatic, coming-of-age movie with a big message and teary reconciliation.
In fact, there aren’t really any major transformations or revelations in the movie. Life just goes on.
Instead of harping on the obvious, Roan seeks more to explore the intricate mother-daughter relationship — especially in Asian society — and make sense of the messy yet often-unspoken emotions and ties that ultimately bind a family together.
Recently the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and its Mini-Me partner in the legislature, the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), have been arguing that construction of chip fabs in the US by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is little more than stripping Taiwan of its assets. For example, KMT Legislative Caucus First Deputy Secretary-General Lin Pei-hsiang (林沛祥) in January said that “This is not ‘reciprocal cooperation’ ... but a substantial hollowing out of our country.” Similarly, former TPP Chair Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) contended it constitutes “selling Taiwan out to the United States.” The two pro-China parties are proposing a bill that
It starts out as a heartwarming clip. A young girl, clearly delighted to be in Tokyo, beams as she makes a peace sign to the camera. Seconds later, she is shoved to the ground from behind by a woman wearing a surgical mask. The assailant doesn’t skip a beat, striding out of shot of the clip filmed by the girl’s mother. This was no accidental clash of shoulders in a crowded place, but one of the most visible examples of a spate of butsukari otoko — “bumping man” — shoving incidents in Japan that experts attribute to a combination of gender
The race for New Taipei City mayor is being keenly watched, and now with the nomination of former deputy mayor of Taipei Hammer Lee (李四川) as the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) candidate, the battle lines are drawn. All polling data on the tight race mentioned in this column is from the March 12 Formosa poll. On Christmas Day 2010, Taipei County merged into one mega-metropolis of four million people, making it the nation’s largest city. The same day, the winner of the mayoral race, Eric Chu (朱立倫) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), took office and insisted on the current
Last month, media outlets including the BBC World Service and Bloomberg reported that China’s greenhouse gas emissions are currently flat or falling, and that the economic giant appears to be on course to comfortably meet Beijing’s stated goal that total emissions will peak no later than 2030. China is by far and away the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, generating more carbon dioxide than the US and the EU combined. As the BBC pointed out in their Feb. 12 report, “what happens in China literally could change the world’s weather.” Any drop in total emissions is good news, of course. By
RSS