The Fourth Portrait beings with a ten year-old boy, Xiang, walking down a road by himself. He goes to a riverbank and plays at the edge of the water. We soon realize his isolation is not just emotional but real, as he next goes to his father's funeral. Xiang seems to be an orphan.
He does in fact have a mother, she lives in another town where she works as a prostitute. She's living with a new man and has a baby with him. When Xiang is brought to her door she is anything but loving to him. He's a relic from a past life that she's trying to escape. She hates her current life as well, but is out of options about how to survive. Xiang must try to survive in this cold world.
As the story moves along, Xiang, who doodles and draws as a hobby, creates four portraits that show his emotional evolution and also give thematic context to the chapters of the story. This is a beautiful and efficient way of telling the story. This film really is triumph of formalism that is a treat to examine. There is something very literary, almost academic, about the straight-forwardness of this structure, but it is actually very beautiful and easy to understand.
Director Mong-Hong Chung's sympathetic depiction of childhood bewilderment is beautiful. He shoots Xiang at his short level or from his point of view looking up at adults, rather than aiming the camera down toward him. This is a very powerful detail that makes us align immediately.
Xiang doesn't know from minute to minute who to trust, who are his family members and which ones of them are dead or alive. The ghost of Xiang's older brother haunts the family, particularly his cruel step-father who is clearly dealing with some demons of his own. Xiang's mother is unapologetic about her work and unable to connect to her son who is looking for simple signs of love and connections.
Chung has definitely been inspired by other contemporary Taiwanese directors, most notably Edward Yang, and his brilliant film Yi Yi, and Ming-Liang Tsai, and his brilliant film Goodbye Dragon Inn. All three of these directors use amazing saturated colors throughout their works as well as beautiful interplays of light and dark. In this film Chung uses color to thematically move the story forward: the first act is blue and green; the second act is red and yellow; the third act is white.
Clearly Chung has watched movies and quotes many of them very cleverly here. A scene between a bafoonish buddy of Xiang and another doofus speaking about real estate sales is a funny take on Kurasawa's Hidden Fortress (or Lucas' Star Wars, which was taken from that as well); the squalor and pain Xiang lives in is reminiscent in tone and appearance to Igor's life in the Dardennes' La Promesse; moments are reminiscent of the desperation of poor children in So Yong Kim's Treeless Mountain. (There are elements of Haruki Murakami here as well.)
It is interesting that as devastating as Xiang's situation is, this is not really a sad movie. There's a matter-of-factness to how this is his life and life will go on that is very powerful. This is a wonderful film and is particularly beautiful from a stylistic, formal and emotional stand point.
Stars: 3.5 of 4
The Fourth Portrait will play at The Film Society of Lincoln Center's Taiwan Stories: Classic and Contemporary Film From Taiwan on May 6 at 6:30pm and May 8 at 3:30pm.
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