Winner of four accolades, including the Best Feature Film, at the 56th Golden Horse Awards, Taiwanese film, A Sun, truly reflects the essence of “every cloud has a silver lining”.

The opening is bound to make you remember the film—a gruesome slashing of someone’s hand and the gushing of blood from the arm during a hotpot dinner.  But at least it reminds viewers that A Sun is not for the casual viewers, well at least not one for the family to binge on a Friday night.

Get ready for a roller-coaster ride as we spend the next 155 minutes witnessing how the tragic and tear-jerking events can break (and repair) the family ties that befall upon the Chen family: a family of four which includes a driving instructor, a hairdresser mom, the all-rounder academically-gifted older brother, and the black sheep.

The cast pull off a superb job in their roles. My personal favourites—impossible to choose really—would be Chen Yi-wen (playing Wen, the patriarch of the house), and Wu Chien-ho (playing the main character Ah-he).  Ah-he faces major problems in his life after his release from the juvenile detention centre, struggling between staying on the right path and listening to his best friend, Cai Tou, who coerces him to rejoin the life of crime.

Most of the emotions and thought processes are expressed through dialogue and cinematography.  A noteworthy one would be the aerial shot of Ah-he running on the highway, and later on, the slow track of the camera after an unexpected and bloody encounter with a group of thugs.  Was Ah-he running away from his problems or was he heading toward a newfound freedom?

The sun rises and sets; no tragedy lasts forever.  The driving school Wen works in believes in the slogan “seize the day, find your direction”.  To me, the motif tells us to drive carefully towards a destination and that it is absolutely fine to take pauses to figure out your directions when you are lost.  For me, I am positive about my next destination: a rewatch of A Sun.

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Evelyn spends her free time watching films and loves those with good character development.  If she is not busy finishing her economics assignments, she tries to clear the entries in her long to-watch (and to-read) lists.