February 9, 2021
It was the 70th birthday of Mrs. Lin Sho-ying (Shu-Fang Chen). Her three daughters, whom she all raised on her own, were all with her in Tainan for the big party. The eldest daughter Ching (Ying-Hsuan Hsieh) was a dance choreographer. The second daughter Yu (Vivian Hsu) was a plastic surgeon based in Taipei. The youngest daughter Jiajia (Ke-Fang Sun) was the manager of the restaurant Sho-ying built from her humble spring rolls stand.
On the same day, the family received news that her long-estranged husband Chen Bo-chang had passed away in a local hospital also in Tainan. In his final days, he was with Tsai Mei-ling (Ning Ding), his common-law wife of several years since he left Sho-ying and their girls to live in Taipei. Sho-ying claimed his body and proceeded to prepare a wake for him. During the course of the services, the sisters unearth long-buried issues about their parents.
There is always something that touches me about films about funerals because they will invariably show how the people left behind will take stock of experiences shared with the deceased, and that process can be very fascinating. Sometimes we may even exist with the same people for years, yet still only a few very specific events will stand out in our memory bank during a person's funeral. Shared secrets will be among these special memories.
As the title suggested, all the major characters were female. It was their emotional hang-ups, hidden frustrations and heavy guilt-trips that carried the film forward. Aside from Bo-chang, whom we only see in flashbacks, the only other male characters were incidental, like Yu's oncologist husband and Ching's new boyfriend and estranged husband. There was also Sho-ying's brother, who always reminded them of Bo-chang's sin against their family.
This film showed rich Chinese family traditions about death. There were contrasts about austere Buddhist prayers and flashy Taoist ceremonies. Amidst modern realities like signing divorce papers, treating breast cancer and taxi karaokes, there were persistent ghosts of the past. However, writer-director Joseph Chen-Chieh Hsu opted to rely more on narrated stories, showing only a few chosen flashbacks. Admittedly, these blanks can be frustrating. 7/10.
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