Summary
An understated character piece is a bittersweet meditation on transitioning through the stages of grief. The Australian premiere opens the Taiwan Film Festival in Sydney.
SEN SEN (生生) is a film about dealing with death and grief, which makes it an odd choice to open the inaugural Taiwan Film Festival in Sydney. Yet director Bon An’s (Black Sheep) film is about so much more than this. Although based around the sharply contemporary technology of livestreaming, it’s a timeless tale about finding connection and coming of age – at any stage of life.
The eponymous Sen Sen’s (Wu Zhi-Xuan) brother passes away, and he goes through his old possessions trying to hold onto his memories. Through his brother’s phone he finds the live webcast of webcast of the elderly Lili (Hong Kong actress Nina Paw Hee-Ching, Our Time Will Come), who has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Livestreaming her attempts to live longer than her doctor’s prognosticated 100 days, Sen Sen and Lili find a bond through their devices and attempt to deal with the inevitable in their own way.
Once you accept that Bon An and co-writer Cheng Ying-Min have constructed something of a tearjerker by design, SEN SEN is a surprisingly understated narrative. Apart from the overarching notion of a ticking clock, the film is filled mostly with micro-dramas. As Lili’s profile grows and becomes noticed by the media, her daughter’s distance and alienation from it all becomes apparent. Sen Sen’s relationship with Lili is mostly juxtaposed with his mother, who deals with the death of her other son in her own way.
You couldn’t find two more different leads that Wu Zhi-Xuan and Nina Paw. Yet the relative newcomer (who began his career in the 2015 short Filial Piety Award) holds his own against the veteran actress, who has been appearing on screen since the Hong Kong cinema of the late 1960s. There’s a beautiful shot of the duo sitting back to back in a bookstore, whimsically playing off this difference. Nevertheless, Nina Paw is never anything less than fierce as the taxi driving granny who refuses to go out on anybody’s terms but her own.
While we often wish it wasn’t the case, all of us are touched by loss and mourning at some stage in our lives. What Bon An does so well here is recognise that this is not a linear process, and everybody needs something different out of their journey. Sen Sen sought out Lili in order to understand what was going through his brother’s mind in his final days, while the grandmother found a proximity she was missing from her own child. It’s a heartfelt journey, and a wonderful way to start this new festival.
2018 | Taiwan | DIRECTOR: Bon An | WRITERS: Bon An, Cheng Ying-Min | CAST: Wu Zhi-Xuan, Nina Paw Hee-Ching, Yen Yi-Wen, Tsai Hsuan-yen | DISTRIBUTOR: Gray Wolf International Film Production Company, TWFF (AUS) | RUNNING TIME: 83 minutes | RELEASE DATE: 27 July 2018 (TWFF)
