More understated visually and less artistically disruptive than Sylvia Chang's other directorial efforts, Siao Yu remains a tender immigrant story which simply strikes the right balance between naturalism and artifice. Beautifully exhibiting the intricacies of the migrant experience with melancholy and a deeply assured hand, Siao Yu is a film that manages to elucidate the disparities in culture and ethnicity which exists while simultaneously encapsulating how they are obfuscated by the larger, simpler struggle of survival rooted in the migrant experience, one in which such socially constructed distinctions prove to ultimately trivial by comparison. Siao Yu is a film which captures the shared spaces of immigrants with a naturalistic eye yet the film's narrative arch and central formal construction is the personal story of Siao Yu and her journey of self-discovery and self-worth. Rene Liu is absolutely wonderful as the lead protagonist, beautifully rendering a characterization of multitudes. She is subservient, yet strong-willed, and through her relationship with Mario, a despondent writer who makes a deal with Siao Yu's boyfriend to marry her for a green card, the film manages to be nuanced in the way it navigates eastern and western norms through its central emotional are of an ultimately symbiotic relationship between a young taiwanese immigrant and an older Italian writer, who life is full of degradation. The film's color palette is largely muted, outside of a few instances in which Siao Yu dons a bright red dress, and the juxtaposition of this with Mario's apartment of yellow and green hues invoke the conditions of its characters while foreshadowing the film's finale, one which is somber but also filled with hope. Without going into details here, Siao Yu is tender, melancholic, and emotionally effective in its ambitions and designs, with Sylvia Chang direction showing great intuition in regards to when to invoke melodrama, in turn managing not only emotional but intellectual impact in its complex story of two disparate souls who are brought together by material desperation but part metaphysically intertwined.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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