Movie rec: Her Story | 好東西 (2024)
Directed by Shao Yihui, this apparently belongs in the same universe as B Is For Busy, which I... didn't get to finish but remember having a similar vibe.
Her Story is a nice, low-key little movie that's not so much about feminism as it is about being a feminist and how your values interact with the real world. And how community is, at the end of the day, about trying your best. Everyone is just trying their best to be a good adult and it's really sweet.
Our characters are Wang Tiemei, a very feminist single mom, and her neighbor Xiao Ye, a sound artist by day and band vocalist at night. They each bring their people to this new relationship—a precocious but troubled daughter, an ex-husband, a drummer, a situationship, and, well, the rest of Xiao Ye's band.
Thoughts:
This was surprisingly restrained and focused—there were a lot of opportunities for big PSA moments that it takes in a more casual-conversational stride to let the different dynamics play out. The movie instead favors character chemistry and relationships, showing us how human connections fill up space and build rhythms into our lives.
Wang Tiemei's "love interests" not quite love interests—they’re more mirrors to her own feminist beliefs. Her ex-husband (played by Mark Chao) is a #performative male who gets into reading feminist literature and earnestly parroting lines about the patriarchy. He says a lot of stupid things with the intent of impressing his ex-wife and his daughter, and gradually gets folded into their growing community, even accidentally bonding with his love rival in the process of competing with him. This is much more effective than writing him as a cartoonishly evil ex which is the standard easy path for the trendy faux-feminist/girlboss stories in East Asian web fiction. (Yes, I have an axe to grind about this.)
The styling was very on-point, everyone dressing to their personalities so it's part of the characterization: Wang Tiemei's statement shirts and her statement novels (tbh I didn't actually notice them, it was @superborb who did haha), Xiao Ye's charmingly messy rocker chic, the drummer boy's repeat outfits and tattered knit sweater (he doesn't have enough aura for this to be feel like a deliberate aesthetic choice) etc etc.
My favorite scene was the one where Xiao Ye takes Wang Moli (Wang Tiemei's daughter) to her workspace and makes her guess sounds! What starts out as a fun little exercise becomes, like Xiao Ye's other line of work, music, as she plays a series of recordings that are nothing but Wang Tiemei. SUCH a good scene and so much warm light.
Content warnings: a brief (unintentional?) self-harm scene + conversations about childhood trauma