Tigertail

Showing on Netflix.

Tigertail, written and directed by Alan Yang is a melancholy drama following three periods in the life of Grover a Taiwanese child shipped off to his grandmother after the death of his father and his mother’s need to leave to find work, through his teenage years and dreams of moving to the United States to fulfill his ambitions, to a tired older man living in the US but not living the life he’d hoped for.

The performances of both Tzi Ma and Hong-Chi Lee as older and younger Grover do a good job of showing his descent from youthful optimism to the frustration of broken dreams and the harsh realities of life. At the core of that descent is a regret for a lost love, Yuan, who Grover meets as a young man in Taiwan and leaves when he heads to America when the opportunity is presented to him.

We feel Grover’s frustrations as those around him fail to appreciate or take advantage of all he is doing for him and also the impact his choices have on others especially in a difficult relationship with his daughter and how his sadness and stoic privacy have impacted her own ability to form the relationship they both seem to crave.

The film is nicely shot and moves seamlessly back and forth through Grover’s life, his younger life shown shot on 16mm “grainy” film while his modern world in crystal clear digitally filmed scenes.

It is not hugely original and doesn’t break new ground but it is a warm tail and while not full of laughs, the feeling of optimism, turning to regret and disappointment permeates throughout. Yang doesn’t present us with a classic happy ending but does give us a warm and loving one that, perhaps, reminds us not to dwell on what we don’t have but to embrace what we do and appreciate it, which right now isn’t a bad message to us all.