Nian nian (2015) Reviews

• Ocean Waves and Flashes of Sunlight

  Raven-19692015-11-08

  As the tide recedes little fish are trapped in tiny pools. This is until the next big wave returns the fish to the ocean where they belong. Stories, like the incoming tide, connect us to others and the world around us. Yet this is true only so long as we hold onto the stories in our hearts. As children on remote Green Island, Mei and Nan's mother told them a tale of a curious mermaid who left her home in order to see the world beyond the sea. Their mother often changed the story's ending and the children never knew why. Mei and Nan treasured this story that they shared. However, dire circumstances separated brother and sister while they were still very young. Their parents also faded from their lives. The siblings grew up apart and out of touch. As adults both Mei, a painter, and Nan, the caretaker of a church, are restless and angry. There are many unanswered questions in their lives that they can't seem to come to terms with. Mei often lashes out at her boyfriend who has enough troubles of his own. Nan loses a friend. Fears and loneliness play with their emotions and eat away at them. Through all this their mother's story calls to them. This wonderful and touching story is accompanied by beautiful imagery of ocean waves, flashes of sunlight, wildflowers, colorful pools and candles. We hear the soothing sounds of rainfall, wind chimes and a lullaby sung in the night. The film comes together so well with capable acting, directing and transitions, and interesting techniques such as flashbacks, dream-scapes and movement back and forth between fantasy and reality. Best of all, the themes of the film are brilliant and profoundly moving. Why do we do things, because of what we are or what we try to be? How important are stories in our lives? How much of our lives are determined by our childhood experiences? What are we trying to prove on our own? Where is our home? What is comforting in all these questions is that love is never lost. Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival 2015.

• Too traditional boring and clinched

  BasicLogic2015-06-28

  Here we got another so-so movie out of Taiwan and again, turned out to be a quite mediocre one. As usual, the screenplay was not good, the dialog contrite, rigid, unnatural and boring. The storyline, well, again, kinda boring and meaningless, even the director and those actors in the film tried so hard to make it seem to be big deal, yet it's just nothing big deal. Here again, I have to point out the most uncomfortable and worst part of this film is the 'dialog'. I don't know why all the Taiwanese actors didn't know how to deliver their dialog not so pretentious and not like reciting or read word by word from their script, especially that female main character's voice, so stupidly disconnected and so pretentious; every time when her dialog came up, we just felt that she was reading from her script word by word, and that, my goodness, just drove me crazy. The drawings...again and again, what's the big deal? About 99% of the Taiwanese actors just didn't know how to act naturally, and as soon as they delivered their dialog, the whole movie just turned into a stage-like crap. If compare to those actors of the Mainland China, Taiwanese actors simply showed their shortness of talent and always gave you an impression they were "ACTING", trying to be that role in the storyline, yet always turned out to be just pretentiously "ACTING", they never gave you an opportunity of feeling real, they never gave you a chance to be "IN" the story, because all of them were just 'ACTING' and didn't give you a true feeling of what they should be. I have to say that Taiwanese actors and the screenplay writers are the worst in Asia, they never improved or changed, they are just a bunch of non-talent people in the wrong business. This is a no-big-deal film, a big MEH and big yawn in the summer afternoon.