Taiwanese music video and commercial director Lai Kuo-An has established quite the extensive career collaborating with the best Taiwanese cinema has to offer. Now, for the first time in his career, Lai Kuo-An grabs the reins as a full-feature length director with “A Fish Out of Water,” a project so confoundedly ambiguous, frustration overwhelms the film’s intrinsic poignancy and its breathtaking touch of sentimentality.
A festering memory torments the mind of Yi-An, a young boy who insists his parents help him find his…well, past parents, who allegedly resided alongside a small fishing village by the sea. With the confusing dilemma at hand, Yi-An’s real parents initially struggle to believe him; in fact, it is put into question that he may suffer some strange psychosis. In light of his apparent absurdity, there is a sense of impenetrability to the boy’s words, as he continues to reiterate his “memories” and desire to reconnect with past guardians. As a result of the boy’s unruffled adamance, viewers are coaxed into either believing that these memories are from a previous life or that maybe he is overtaken by someone else’s soul. Disappointingly, the ambiguity surrounding the boy is left tethered to a grueling pace and an unfulfilled build up of events.
Although Lai Kuo-An’s directorial debut is an uneven one at best, he seamlessly captures the atmosphere of one of the world’s most vibrant cinematic cultures — with its dense eeriness that compares well to one of the greatest Taiwanese films of all time, Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s 1985 “A Time to Live, a Time to Die,” which in its own right, seems like a deceptively simple, run-of-the-mill coming age film of adolescence. However, unlike “A Fish Out of Water,” Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s masterpiece subtly unveils itself through composed, image-driven storytelling, similar to how a blue sky gradually reveals itself as its fellow clouds float by. Unfortunately for Lai Kuo-An, his debut feels aimless and nothing is really revealed in the mold of a message. Consequently, I felt spread too thin as a viewer, grasping for something of value to hold onto. At the same time, this deep search for a message distracted from the absorption of beautiful fragments of images and picturesque displays of scenery that presents itself as one of only a few elements of merit to the film.
With its pitfalls in hindsight, “A Fish Out of Water” is undoubtedly a unique film about family dynamics and the transcendent abilities of one’s memories. Lai Kuo-An treads a fine line between reality and the metaphysical while depicting with an emotive eye the tumultuous inner workings of the film’s well-acted characters, who are all contoured gracefully within an affecting bestowal of familial strife and its cultivation of genuine dynamics. With the Taiwanese New Wave movement of film an obvious inspiration, Lai Kuo-An translates the internal struggles of these dynamics in order to discourse larger issues—specifically, how the capitalistic nature of the modern yet decaying Taiwanese lifestyle contends with the romanization of its past.
If only the film were more clear with its message. “A Fish Out of Water” fails to transform Lai Kuo-An’s inner visions into anything truly memorable or supernatural in its intentions, nor does it fully capitalize on the parental strife in a truly compelling way. There was potential here for more development; unfortunately, a lack of payoff in the midst of the overbearing curiosity surrounding the little boy drowns the viewer in its failed aspirations set forth by a deceptively promising final act. At the end of all the confusion, viewers are left with the same questions presented within the first 20 minutes of “A Fish Out of Water.” Is the boy actually shackled to some past life? Or is the longing for his “past parents” some psychosis? [C-/D+]
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