New York Asian Film Festival : Trouble Girl / Exclusive Interview Chin Chia Hua

Trouble Girl : Just when you thought the Taiwanese family drama might have run dry, along comes Trouble Girl to blow the roof off. Chin Chia-Hua's explosive feature debut is a blood-red cherry bomb lobbed at the heart of the genre. Ostensibly about a single mother struggling to raise her ADHD-afflicted daughter, beneath its surface actually lies a squirming nest of angst and unspoken transgressions. Twelve-year-old Audrey Lin, in a revelatory turn that scored her a historic Golden Horse Award as the youngest ever best actress honoree, is a pint-sized powder keg as Xiaoxiao, ricocheting between precocity and volatility. Lin Pintong's harried mom and her ambiguous rapport with teacher Paul stoke the outré psychodrama, creating a hothouse atmosphere ripe with lust and jealousy. Yet, amidst the Freudian fever dream, Jiahua never loses sight of his characters' frayed humanity. His fractured, impressionistic style doesn't just mirror the shards of Xiaoxiao's dizzying subjectivity; it's a direct tap into the audience's limbic system. Trouble Girl is a disquieting head-trip disguised as an innocuous domestic portrait-a prickly, paradoxical but ultimately transcendent work that lays bare the viscera of maternal sacrifice and obsession. Chin has crafted a bracing tonic for the jaded cinephile, a daring X-ray of the psyche that jolts the senses and heralds the arrival of a bold new voice in Taiwanese cinema.
Director: Chin Chia-Hua
Cast: Ivy Chen, Audrey Lin, Terrance Lau
Languages: Mandarin with English subtitles
2023; 103 min.
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