Westernization of Asian cinema aside, the Tigertail plot, which is inspired by the personal story of its director Alan Yang, travels through three layers of Pin-Jui's life (Tzi Ma, Hong-Chi Lee and Zhi-Hao Yang) through flashbacks little linear about the personality of a desolate child, a reticent youth and a resigned adult.
The script, which is very much based on the poet Chorão's maxim "every choice, a renunciation, this is life", builds the power of its protagonist through his relationships with the most important women in his history: his mother, his great jovial love , his fake wife and his firstborn.
As time goes by, the irreconcilable versions of Pin-Jui are revealed as the young Taiwanese's interest in living the American Dream becomes more evident. When he decides to face his greatest ambition in a pragmatic way, he gives up his greatest passion, Yuan (Yo-Hsing Fang), and agrees to marry his boss's daughter, Zhenzhen (Kunjue Li), in exchange for the opportunity to moving to the United States.
Between the Taiwanese desolation and the collapse of the not-so-meritocratic American dream, Tigertail is the distressing portrait of a man who was never able to cross his own fortunes and break the barriers of his emotional inconsistency, being exhausted of carrying the weight of his own cross. As he taunts in a grocery store while his pregnant wife reaches the inevitable limit of an abandonment routine, Ping Jui becomes a demanding and empathetic husband, fading the course of his family relationships to failure.
With the older protagonist, divorced and introspective, the film transports us to a predictable attempt of approximation between father and daughter, preparing an atmosphere of nebulosity under the personality of the adult Angela. When this process begins, director of photography, Nigel Bluck, is splendid in connecting the idealism of Ping Jui's memories with his current nature adept at self-sabotage. The greatest asset of the film is precisely the melancholy natural planes and scenes performed by the excellent Tzi Ma, alone, transmitting his character's inner struggle through powerful body language.
If it is necessary to synthesize the qualities of Tigertail in one scene, there is no way to be different. The composition frame by frame in the last moments of the short work, ends in a man eternally linked to his past, but who manages to give a respite to his own imperfections. Faced with what is gone. Beside what you have left.
The script, which is very much based on the poet Chorão's maxim "every choice, a renunciation, this is life", builds the power of its protagonist through his relationships with the most important women in his history: his mother, his great jovial love , his fake wife and his firstborn.
As time goes by, the irreconcilable versions of Pin-Jui are revealed as the young Taiwanese's interest in living the American Dream becomes more evident. When he decides to face his greatest ambition in a pragmatic way, he gives up his greatest passion, Yuan (Yo-Hsing Fang), and agrees to marry his boss's daughter, Zhenzhen (Kunjue Li), in exchange for the opportunity to moving to the United States.
Between the Taiwanese desolation and the collapse of the not-so-meritocratic American dream, Tigertail is the distressing portrait of a man who was never able to cross his own fortunes and break the barriers of his emotional inconsistency, being exhausted of carrying the weight of his own cross. As he taunts in a grocery store while his pregnant wife reaches the inevitable limit of an abandonment routine, Ping Jui becomes a demanding and empathetic husband, fading the course of his family relationships to failure.
With the older protagonist, divorced and introspective, the film transports us to a predictable attempt of approximation between father and daughter, preparing an atmosphere of nebulosity under the personality of the adult Angela. When this process begins, director of photography, Nigel Bluck, is splendid in connecting the idealism of Ping Jui's memories with his current nature adept at self-sabotage. The greatest asset of the film is precisely the melancholy natural planes and scenes performed by the excellent Tzi Ma, alone, transmitting his character's inner struggle through powerful body language.
If it is necessary to synthesize the qualities of Tigertail in one scene, there is no way to be different. The composition frame by frame in the last moments of the short work, ends in a man eternally linked to his past, but who manages to give a respite to his own imperfections. Faced with what is gone. Beside what you have left.