Review | A Sun film review: grief and violence in slow-burn Golden Horse awards winner
- Suicides, pregnancies and gangland violence punctuate this two-and-a-half hour examination of unaddressed grief and unspoken expectations
- The film, streaming on Netflix, follows the head of a working-class family in Taipei who turns his back on one son in jail and invests everything in the other
3.5/5 stars
Veteran actor and filmmaker Chen Yi-wen stars as A-wen, the emotionally inarticulate driving instructor at the head of an ordinary working-class family in contemporary Taipei. Turning his back on elder son A-ho (Wu Chien-ho) long before he is sentenced to three years in juvenile detention, A-wen invests instead in younger son A-hao (Greg Hsu Kuang-han), who is applying for medical school.
Imprisoned for being an accessory in a violent assault, A-ho must contend with hostile cellmates and conditions, as well the discovery that his underage girlfriend Xiao-yu (Wu Tai-ling) is carrying his unborn child. Meanwhile, Radish (Liu Kwan-ting), a low-level gangster and the perpetrator of the attack, is also eagerly awaiting his release.
A-hao, meanwhile, appears just as lost as his sibling, clashing with teachers at his school, and too closed-off to accept the advances of a female classmate. A more sensitive soul than his brother, he proves tragically ill-equipped for the pressures facing him at home and out in the world.
Evoking the slow-burn style of Taiwanese New Wave masters and filmmakers Hou Hsiao-hsien and Edward Yang, A Sun explores the crumbling relationships within the family – not through heated conversations and emotional conflict, but with extended sequences of painfully drawn-out silence, as long-held grievances simmer persistently.