Tigertail (2020), directed by Alan Yang
Review of Tigertail (2020), directed by Alan Yang
For the remainder of 2021, I made a goal of where I promised myself I was going to watch more foreign films as well as more content from diaspora and immigrant communities. Alan Yang has previously made a splash for his work on Parks and Recreation as well as Master of None; which, if you can imply from that, he has mainly worked in the realm of comedy. You’re going to see that as we get into this review, because Tigertail is his debut directorial effort, as well as falling with the realm of drama when it comes to the genre. That’s quite literally the opposite of drama, which, in this case, affects how the film comes across. And I will say upfront, while Yang had a good story, it isn’t done executed in a way that audiences would react well to.
Well, I’ve said a lot already, so let’s dive into this review.
Content
The narrative of this film is split in two, and it often switches back and forth, which works well in this scenario because you can compare and contrast what has happened compared to the past. We start with our main character as a boy in Taiwan, where his father has died and his mother sends him to his grandparents outside of Huwei. He meets a rich girl and they become playmates of sorts, but once he goes back to his mother and begins to work in the factories, he never sees her again. As a teenager, he meets a woman he doesn’t really connect with, Zhenzhen, but when his mother becomes injured, he decides to marry Zhenzhen and immigrate to the United States.
This is where Zhenzhen’s discontent begins. As a married couple in a traditional setting, she stays at home while he goes to work, and she is very lonely. She dreams of becoming a teacher, which he denies her this dream because he thinks they should have children and she should stay at home. They end up with a single daughter, who, as we juxtapose the past to the present, we discover has no connection to her father at all. He doesn’t seem to know how to talk to her, his behavior seeming almost abusive at times. She is an American, while he acts like a traditional father. Perhaps he acts this way because he never had a father in his life, but as her personal life begins to fall apart, he seems unable to connect and have empathy for his only daughter.
This is where the problems begin for me. We learn that the father and the mother are now divorced, which is unsurprising because they seemed unable to connect themselves from the very beginning, and that the father and daughter also don’t really have a connection. This is a mirror to the father’s own life, as he seemed to not have a relationship really with his own mother, while his father died while he was young. But we only learn tidbits about the daughter, including a strange sequence that’s silent of her fiance leaving her. We know nothing about this relationship or nothing really about her, so the emotional gravity of this situation doesn’t really hit me as a viewer because I have zero emotional connection to this woman.
I also wondered if the film, really, should’ve been a film. It would’ve added more depth to see this as a television melodrama because we have four different time periods depicted in a single movie. That’s a lot of eras to go through, and I found them a bit rushed, especially because they’re not really in chronological order because of the juxtaposition. It was just a lot for me as a viewer to go through all at once, which was overwhelming. The drama was too heavy with little balance added into it. It was too sad, with very few silver linings in the situation.
There were some really good aspects of this film though! It’s very quiet in tone, subtle in the messages and the themes sprinkled throughout. He has left the love of his life behind in Taiwan, only to find out she is now happy later in life. It reminds me of the flow process of decisions, about how your life could’ve ended up so differently if only you had done this or that. His immigration story was not a shining one, but instead marred with mundane jobs and a disappointing family life, leaving him quietly suffering. And this is a tale that is universal for so many immigrants in America.
Overall Thoughts
It’s a film with a lot of heart and soul to it. I think if you want an immigration story with a lot of context, as well as dwelling upon the thought of missed opportunities and the ones you do take, this is the film for you. It spans over four different time periods, making an attempt to be an epic of sorts but also not really. Apparently this is Yang’s personal story about his own family, albeit some fictional elements, which gives it more heart than the average film. This film demonstrates what Tolstoy once wrote in Anna Karenina, about how every happy family is alike but every unhappy family is unique.
