Heartbreaking But Hopeful, DEAR EX 谁先爱上他的 is a Stylish Film About The Different Ways of Dealing With Grief, Loss, and Forgiveness4 min read
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A teenage boy and his wilful mother are driven further apart when they find out that his father’s life insurance policy is to be received by his lover, a free-spirited man. He is then forced to navigate their bitter feud while they each deal with grief in their own way.
Director: Mag Hsu, Hsu Chih-Yen
Year: 2018
Cast: Roy Chiu, Ying-Xuan Hsieh, Spark Chen
Language: Mandarin
Country: Taiwan
Runtime: 100 min
Review by Leticia Sim
“Hatred makes it easier to heal,” says Zheng Yuan to his lover, Ah Jie, in a flashback towards the end of Dear Ex. “Bullshit,” Ah Jie counters: “Love makes it easier to heal.”
They’re both right; the process of healing from grief in the wake of personal tragedy is deeply confusing, complicated, and downright disorientating —Dear Ex approaches these themes with delicate sensitivity, and an off-kilter sense of humour.
After the death of his father, teenager Cheng Xi grapples to deal with his conflicting emotions and anger towards his mother, Liu San Lian. He then unwittingly finds himself caught in the middle of her dispute with his father’s carefree male lover over insurance money. It’s a simple narrative, dealing with not-so-simple concepts. Dear Ex throws its deeply flawed characters into the deep end of flux and crisis, forcing them to ultimately rely on one another to grow and heal.
At the start, we are presented with insanely unlikeable characters—Cheng Xi is apathetic and grumpy, his mother is dramatic and hysterical, and Ah Jie is a self-loathing bum. While that’s nothing we haven’t seen done before, and the film’s initial quirky tone seems a little misplaced, the purposeful stylistic choices that kick in eventually enrich and add a great deal of nuance and depth to the story.
Child-like animated doodles are superimposed onto real-life moments of uncertainty and vulnerability, giving us a peek into the otherwise closed off and convoluted mind of a kid trying to make sense of his increasingly perplexing surroundings. Through the use of flashbacks, we are offered glimpses and snapshots into the past, and it is through these revelations that we are able to slowly recontextualise various situations.
Told from the point of view of a teenager, these elements rarely fully falter on their own. But it is only when they culminate together in scenes of emotional intensity do they really flourish. In Cheng Xi’s mind, he suppresses the thought of his dad and Ah Jie kissing with increasingly manic scribbles, a visual manifestation of how he struggles to come to terms with his dad choosing to spend his last days with a total stranger instead of with his own son. It’s simple, yet incredibly effective in building empathetic characters and reinforcing running themes.
Visually distinctive colour palettes depict an emotive atmosphere, reminiscent of a dreamy Wong Kar Wai landscape. We are treated to carefully framed, wide-angle shots accompanied with grimy emerald kitchens, red maudlin living rooms, and flashbacks flushed with cold blue hues—a beautiful distraction from the sometimes overdone exposition.
Looking past the rather slow plot progression and fluctuating tonal changes in the first half of the film, the viewers are rewarded with what bit by bit develops into a touching character study. In light of Taiwan’s landmark decision of being the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage, Dear Ex’s way of dealing with the complexities of sexualality without making Ah Jie a patronising stereotype is a refreshing change from the tired tropes of an LGBT-themed tragedy.
Subtleties in each actor’s performance—like the tender loving gaze in Ah Jie’s eyes when he’s talking to his lover, or the gradual shift from rage to piercing shame in Liu Sanlian’s expression after revealing something she shouldn’t have—remind us of what is ultimately a very human message: sometimes the lines between villains and victims, hatred and love are not as simple as we think.
You can catch the heartbreaking yet hopeful Dear Ex on Netflix!
