Father to Son (2018)

"Stories from the past you want to hear hide in the future"

Father to Son was another slow, meditative work by Hsiao Ya Chuan. Packed with colorful characters denied real life by shockingly short interludes, the film hinted at a deeper story that it could not fulfill. Yet there were still points to recommend from this film about fathers and sons and their complex life cycles.

Van Pao Te/Ah Te is a sixty-year-old owner of a hardware store and has made a name for himself with his inventions. He and his wife aren’t close but he helps her campaign for a local office once run by her mother. His son, Fan Ta Chi, is gifted at coding and assists his dad with their business. One day while working in a hospital, Ah Te is seized with pain. An old schoolmate who is a doctor witnesses it and gives him an exam. The results regarding his pancreas are not promising. As Ah Te contemplates his future, the past bids him to call. His father had abandoned the family and moved to Japan when Ah Te was 10, never to be heard from again. Ah Te and Ta Chi take a business trip to Japan and then go in search of his father. Meanwhile, a young man from Hong Kong who is close to Ta Chi’s age visits Ah Te’s old flame.

Father and son relationships can be complicated especially when the primary source of demonstrating love was simply not walking out. Ah Te was a man of few words and fewer visible emotions though the scars from his childhood ran deep. Determined to not make the same mistakes, he sought to give his son an exit ramp from feeling obligated to stay and support his parents. Huang Chung Kun gave a quietly intense performance of a man grappling with a future receding from him and a past overcoming him. Fu Meng Po crafted a son who had come to understand his father’s sacrifice and faults, while gently caring for Ah Te as the illness chipped away at his health.

The cinematography and scene compositions were lovely. Several crucial incidents occurred during the time between 1987-1988. As I’m not a scholar of Taiwanese history, I’ll let better informed viewers seek out the symbolism. Circulation or cycles did play out in the film and it wasn’t hard to see how Ah Te sought to break the cycle his father created, yet still inadvertently may have effectuated his own offshoot of estrangement. The laundress’ niece, Nico, blew into town much in the way Yu Chin had years ago and Ta Chi was attracted to her as his father had been to Yu Chin. The film was slice of life slow with sparse dialogue and I would have loved to have gotten to know several characters and their stories better. My biggest complaint was that past events were intriguing and wished Hsiao had filled in more of their background. My other complaint was the ending which felt out of place in this glacially paced, yet life affirming film.

Father to Son wasn’t a reconciliation film, more like revelatory film. Questions to some answers remained an enigma, and the individual had to discover meaning out of the mist of memory, critical absences, and a flawed life lived with the best of intentions. Each generation had to work to break out of unhealthy cycles even as their eyes were opened to answers that must be experienced to be understood.

16 July 2026

Trigger warnings: Smoking. Brief nudity-both male and female in two different scenes. Vomiting.

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