A Foggy Tale dispenses hope for a better tomorrow even in times of (White) Terror (Film review)

  

A Foggy Tale screened at the Hong Kong 

Cultural Centre's Grand Theatre 

 

Lead actor Will Or on stage at the post-screening Q&A

 

A Foggy Tale (Taiwan, 2025)

- Chen Yu Hsun, director-scriptwriter

- Starring: Caitlin Fang, Will Or, 9m88

- Part of the HKIFF's Gala Presentation program 

 

The "White Terror", the name given to period of martial law and violent political repression of by the then ruling Kuomintang political party, lasted for 40 years. In 1989, two years after it ended, Hou Hsiao Hsien made the first film about it, the seminal City of Sadness.  In the years since, a few other filmmakers have mined this subject, including another great Taiwanese auteur, the late Edward Yang, with A Brighter Summer Day (1991).  

 

Clearly though, there still are a lot of stories to tell about those tumultuous times. And by way of this winner of four Golden Horse Awards (including for Best Narrative Feature, and Best Original Screenplay for its director-scriptwriter), Chen Yu Hsun has produced a powerful work that deserves to be spoken in the same breath as the works of Hou and Yang -- and honoured the memories of those who unjustly perished during the White Terror and those who survived against the odds.    

 

A Foggy Tale tells the story of Yue (portrayed by Caitlin Fang), an orphaned teen from an impoverished rural family whose beloved elder brother is captured and killed by the Kuomintang.  Determined to bring his body back home (rather than have it end up in a common grave), she makes the approximately 250 kilometer journey from Chiayi to Taipei.       

 

Plucky but naive, she soon gets abducted by men aiming to sell her off to for a few hundred (Taiwanese) dollars.  Very fortuitously for her though, she also had crossed paths with a Cantonese ex-soldier turned rickshaw driver whose foul mouth belies his heart of gold and Kung-tao (played by multi-lingual Hong Kong actor, Will Or) and he comes to her rescue.  Over and over again, as it turns out.   

 

In addition to being this film's title, A Foggy Tale also is the name of a story that Yue's elder brother tells her elder sister (played by the actress whose stage name is 9m88), a Taipei resident who Yue had previously never really known as the elder sibling had been sold off when Yue was very young.  In addition, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that director-scriptwriter Chen thinks that many people today have foggy memories of the White Terror and that he wants to cast light on those terribly trying times that he, who currently is in his 63rd year, lived through.  (More than by the way, his Wikipedia entry includes the following line: "After failing the university entrance exam, he had no choice but to enlist in the military.")

 

More than by the way, there is no escaping from the fact that A Foggy Tale is an intense film with painfully tragic and stomach-churningly horrific moments and scenes.  But director-scriptwriter Chen makes this excellent dramatic work easier to watch and digest by including in it colourful characters, some light, even (darkly) comedic segments, and a hope that better days and futures lie ahead, for individual people and, also, their nation as a whole.      

 

My rating for this film: 9.