The
heroine of the long-running manga series Crest
of the Royal Family is a lot like the British nurse in the Outlander franchise, but she traveled
back to ancient Egypt. Young Lin Hsiao-yang both identifies with her and fantasizes
of being her. However, she is very definitely stuck in the present day of
mid-1980s Taipei in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s unfairly overlooked (including by Hou himself)
Daughter of the Nile (trailer here), which returns to theaters for its 30th
anniversary, freshly restored in 4K.
Sadly,
Lin’s eldest brother died sometime before the film commences, but his loss is
constantly felt throughout the narrative. He was the only family member who
could keep their middle sibling Lin Hsiao-fang in line. Brother Fang was always
a thief and a gambler, but he was good to their mother during her fatal
struggle with cancer and also looks out for his little sisters reasonably well.
His gangster-gigolo friend Ah-sang is a different story, but Sister Yang falls
for him anyway.
For
a while, Ah-sang expatriates to America, but it was apparently a bad
experience. Lin’s brother paid for the return ticket, but neither speaks of it
in any great detail. Ah-sang comes home just as the gang appears poised for
success, having opened an upscale restaurant as a semi-front. Yet, Ah-sang’s
erratic nature and Hsiao-fang’s increasingly compulsive gambling threaten
everyone’s future.
It
is strange Nile became the red-headed
step-child of Hou’s filmography, because it feels like a perfectly
representative example of his style. He would touch on somewhat similar themes
in Millennium Mambo, but it would be
particularly interesting to watch this film in dialogue with Edward Yang’s A Brighter Summer Day. Both films follow
disadvantaged high school students relegated to the night sessions of
over-crowded facilities, as they engage it varying degrees of crime. Although
the political situation was much more relaxed in the 1980s than the late 1950s,
a reckless accusation could still lead to dire consequences.
Poor
Taiwanese pop star Lin Yang got a bad rap for her lead performance as Lin
Hsiao-yang. Her work is tightly controlled and so restrained she can hardly
breathe, but that makes her character so terribly human. Ultimately, it is
quite a poignant portrayal. Hou regular Jack Kao is also terrific as the
charismatic but self-defeating Hsiao-fang. Yet, Li Tan-lu steals so many scenes
as their grandfather, he continued on to play several more grandpas in
subsequent Hou films and served as the subject of his bio-pic, The Puppetmaster.
Even
in Taipei, the eighties looked like the eighties. In fact, it is a very 1980s
kind of story, focusing on several young people struggling to make good while
holding together some semblance of a family. This was the Hou film that almost
got away, but fortunately it has been restored and given a second chance to
resonate with viewers. Highly recommended, Daughter
of the Nile opens this Friday (10/27) in New York, at the Quad Cinema.
