This was the fiftieth anniversary of the Toronto International Film Festival® (TIFF) and the line-up was exceptional. I particularly appreciated how there were so many films featuring young girls this year. Two of them even had the word “girl” in the title. A few of them featured girls who were particularly brave.
The three films about brave girls that I want to talk about here are Girl, Left-handed Girl, and The World of Love. They all deal with dysfunctional families and with young girls trying to cope with trauma and abandonment.
Girl
Girl, written and directed by Shu Qi, is a story of domestic violence set in Taiwan. In this film, a father, played by Roy Chiu, is physically, sexually, and emotionally abusing his young wife, played by Lai Yu-Fei, who then takes it out on her older daughter, Hsiao-Lee, played by Bai Xiao-Ying, abusing and rejecting her.
Hsiao-Lee meets a classmate, Li-Li, whose sense of freedom and empowerment opens up possibilities in her mind. She begins to explore the world outside her home and her school, while continuing to shield her younger sister from her father’s violence.
This film is a devastating portrait of what can happen when a mother feels trapped and helpless in an abusive relationship, and how a woman can be both victim and perpetrator of abuse. The young girl who plays Hsiao-Lee gives a subtle and searing performance, depicting a child who only wants her mother’s love and attention, and who can’t comprehend why her younger sister is the only child in the family who receives it. To me, it was one of the best films at the festival this year.
Left-Handed Girl
Left-Handed Girl is another film from Taiwan, directed by Shi-Ching Tsou, and written by Tsou and Sean Baker.
It’s the story of a small family composed of a mom, a 20-year-old daughter, and a five-year-old daughter. The film begins as they move back to Taipei so that the mom can open a food stall in the night market.
As the film unfolds, it’s unclear why the older daughter is so resentful of her mother and so unwilling to help out, either at the food stall or with the younger girl. It’s also unclear why the five-year-old is being neglected by the mom. The child roams through the market on her own after dark, getting into all sorts of trouble, while no one is aware of what she’s doing or seems to care.
Eventually, family secrets are revealed, and everyone’s motivations become clear. It’s a story about intergenerational trauma, family shame, the attempts to save face, and how to transcend all of this and become a loving, united family.
The youngest daughter exhibits tremendous resilience as she endures abandonment, loss, loneliness, and unfair criticism, but she perseveres, not allowing her circumstances to define her. She may only be five, but she is enormously brave.
The World of Love
The third film in this trio about brave girls is The World of Love, written and directed by Yoon Ga-eun. It’s a Korean film about a teenage girl, Jooin, played by Seo Su-bin, who refuses to be defined by her past.
While her father’s guilt has caused him to abandon the family, and her mother abuses alcohol to drown her own guilt, Jooin’s little brother quietly protects her from further harm.
Jooin isn’t your typical trauma survivor. She’s lively, social, fun, and outspoken. Her wounds are only visible through her hot temper and her ambivalence toward intimacy.
This girl’s courage is demonstrated by her determination to live as normal a life as possible. She rejects the identity of victim and insists on being a full and complex human being.
In refusing to let her trauma diminish her, Jooin bravely takes charge of her own narrative and creates the life she wants to live.
These three stories about brave young girls were powerful, often painful, but always enlightening and inspiring. It shows that courage can be found everywhere; even in the youngest and most innocent members of society.
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