"The film resorts to increasingly manipulative tactics to wring out every drop of available emotion from the audience, like some merciless warden during exercise hour."
"Instead of integrating their personalities and pasts meaningfully into the choir plotline, Lin lets the inmates melodramatically solo out backstories in pointless flashback."
The film, a Taiwanese box office hit, follows Hui-Zhen, who raises her daughter in prison after killing her abusive husband. The narrative relies heavily on emotional manipulation, with excessive crying and a peppy tone that detracts from the story's potential depth. Hui-Zhen forms a choir with fellow inmates to give her daughter a happy farewell, but the film's approach lacks authenticity. Characters' backstories are presented through flashbacks that feel disconnected from the main plot, undermining the overall impact of the film's themes.
Read at www.theguardian.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]