It
is an awkward milestone. Young adults start to take on legal responsibilities
at the age of eighteen, but they are still just kids. Usually, the eighteenth
birthday is a cause for celebration, but there will be much more frustration
than joy in the lives of two Native Taiwanese girls. Ho Chao-ti follows the
teenagers as they navigate their late teen years in Turning 18 (trailer
here),
which screens during this year’s First Look at MoMI.
Chen
and Pei are not really close. They just happened to meet during a summer
vocational training program, but they both have been dealt a tough hand by
life. This is especially true for Chen, who has been sexually abused by her
father and other male family members. She struggles to maintain a close
relationship with her mother, but the older woman’s alcoholism and health
problems make matters difficult.
In
contrast, Pei has arguably contributed to her difficult situation by making
some questionable decisions, most definitely including shacking up with her
deadbeat boyfriend Wei. Of course, there must be reasons she would so passively
accept her bad situation, but we do not learn very much about her backstory.
Regardless,
viewers will quickly come to ache for poor, struggling Chen. In addition to
having the more compelling life-drama, she is also a hugely charismatic figure
on-screen. Plus, her narrative arc covers considerably more territory, especially
when she comes out of the closet and begins to openly experience romance and
heartache.
In
many ways, Turning 18 is a perfect
example of how documentaries often serve as the snobby cineaste’s version of
reality TV. Ho definitely incorporates issues of discrimination against Native
Taiwanese, but there are scenes of Chen pining for an unfaithful lover and Pei
arguing with Wei that would not be out of place on MTV’s old Real World voyeurism festival.
Regardless,
Ho’s commitment is impressive. She clearly earned her subjects trust, even
becoming a confident over the years that she filmed Chen and Pei. There are plenty
of social issue justifications to be made for the doc, but it still often feels
intrusive and even exploitative (for the record, the same is true of Grey Gardens, for the same reasons).
Recommended for patrons of up-close-and-personal documentaries, Turning 18 screens this Sunday (1/20),
as part of First Look at MoMI.
