Review | Netflix movie review: Little Big Women – Taiwanese drama navigates emotional minefield of an ordinary family
- Chen Shu-fang stars as the stubborn matriarch of a Taiwanese family whose estranged womaniser husband dies suddenly, causing past grievances to boil over
- Chen is excellent – she won a best actress Golden Horse Award in recognition – but it is Hsieh Ying-xuan who impresses most as her daughter
3.5/5 stars
Veteran actress Chen Shu-fang won two Golden Horse Awards last year: best supporting actress for Dear Tenant, and best actress for Joseph Hsu Chen-chieh’s Little Big Women, which received its world premiere last October at the Busan International Film Festival.
In Hsu’s film, Chen plays the stubborn matriarch of a Taiwanese family, Lin Shaying, who is preparing to celebrate her 70th birthday when her estranged husband, absent for 20 years, dies suddenly. Shaying vows to host the funeral in Tainan, a city on Taiwan’s southwest coast, if only to spite the wishes of her husband’s long-term lover, Ms Tsai (Ding Ning), a woman she refuses to meet.
With her three adult daughters already in town – Vivian Hsu Jo-hsuan’s successful plastic surgeon, Hsieh Ying-xuan’s free-spirited divorcee and Sun Ke-fang’s dutiful restaurateur – birthday celebrations pivot into funeral preparations. But old secrets and past grievances inevitably boil over.
Inspired by his grandmother’s own life, Joseph Hsu’s film resonates with the authenticity of first-hand experience, while drawing inevitable comparison to everything from Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman to Chung Mong-hong’s Oscar submission A Sun , as it navigates the emotional minefield of an ordinary Taiwanese family.