In one of the earlier episodes of Netflix’s “Master of None” – once upon a faraway time one of the streamer’s premiere original products – we’re granted access to the recollections of a background character’s journey to America, instigated by a moment of his son taking him for granted. Via spritzy montage, we see this man go from young boy in Taiwan to adolescent with dreams of venturing west before arriving and working his way to success, and finally to holding the infant who will have a bit of a clearer path in life. The momentary irony is rooted in sadness. But it sets up a satisfying payoff down the road when the son discovers his father’s history, and he becomes eager to learn more about it.
That episode of the Alan Yang-produced show (aptly titled “Parents”) now feels like it was a dry run for Yang’s first feature film that debuted Friday on Netflix, “Tigertail”—a thoughtful movie somewhat weighed down by its third act’s unfocused sentimentality. It’s easy spot the thematic and structural parallels; both trace an Asian-American immigrant’s personal history from Taiwan before arriving on the East Coast, and both feel like intensely personal examinations of evolving relationships between a father and his child. How personal? It’s tempting to buy into the idea that both stories are Yang’s attempts at reparations through the small screen.
But where “Parents” felt optimistic, “Tigertail” is laced with melancholy. Yang’s movie (which he also wrote) feels like the budding filmmaker responding to himself, allowing himself a taste of bitter truths that may have been concealed in “Parents”—namely, that sacrifice and fulfillment don’t always occupy the same territory.
“Tigertail” is the story of Pin-Jui (Tzi Ma, who, under different circumstances, we would have recently seen in Disney’s “Mulan” redo). Bouncing between his memories as an adolescent as infatuated with a girl as he is with dreams of America and modern images of him having seen at least one of those commitments through, Yang paints a portrait of a life where something was lost along the way. Ma is an actor for whom sadness simmering under the surface has always seemed to come naturally. It also comes through in Yang’s screenplay as Pin-Jui struggles to communicate with his daughter, Angela (Christine Ko), or even hold eye contact with her.
What has happened in the decades of his life that this sadness feels so impenetrable? A passing remark he’s given as a teen in Asia may suggest it: “Better have fun with her while you can.” Young Pin-Jui is a man of many fantasies as he runs through infinite fields, labors away in a factory under dangerous conditions and softly sings Otis Redding on a riverbank with his girlfriend, Yuan. It isn’t long before he accepts not all of them can become reality—which is where the similar paths of “Parents” and “Tigertail” begin to sharply diverge.
For the most part, Yang’s debut brims with earnestness, though the broad strokes of his narrative implications don’t always fall neatly Into place alongside the specifics of Pin-Jui’s journey or Ashley’s own life obstacles. It’s difficult to reconcile his reluctantly leaving for America when it means leaving behind something – someone – we’ve seen he cares just as much about, if not more so. But what follows are well-crafted anecdotes of he and his new wife’s first days in America, and the mechanisms of a marriage where romance is practically no factor.
Yang doesn’t skimp on showing how the USA’s doorstep can be uninviting to an immigrant with little to lose and much to gain (as much an element of the immigrant story as New York City itself), but he does shade it with the colors of his characters’ personal experience. In one of “Tigertail’s” most deeply-felt and intelligent sequences, Yang brilliantly foregrounds the monotony that can set in while toiling towards the so-called American Dream, and the emotional currency the journey can demand of its aspirants.
In these bits of the story, Yang also inserts subtle commentary on the practicality and functionality of relationships. “Tigertail” is visually sumptuous, but here especially the ripe colors of Wong Kar-Wai emerge as clear influence—fiery reds and grimy yellows do wonders to emphasize Pin-Jui’s newfound iron will as a new New York denizen.
More devastatingly, Yang suggests raw realities that portray relationships as means to an end. It’s these textures that keep “Tigertail” from becoming overwhelmed with tropes and clichés. In practice, Yang ultimately shapes these tropes into his examinations of a father and daughter unable to communicate, although this bit of the film can feel emotionally bifurcated from everything else happening on the screen.
At a certain point, “Tigertail” suddenly raises its eye in realizing how much story it still has to tell, and it begins consolidating decades of chronology into minutes, putting some cracks in the pathos that had been so carefully constructed thus far. The final act is undeniably a rushed conclusion, and the plot involving Angela feels much less developened. But in the overwhelmingly Anglo cinema of today, there’s value in seeing the full arc of an Asian-American experience as I imagine Yang set out to provide with his film.
There’s also some poetic symmetry in the individual drawbacks Pin-Jui – now calling himself Grover –and Angela must endure to connect with each other once again, and the film flexes its muscles in the way it bookends itself. What has emerged is a story about embracing your history and all its thorns, right down to “Tigertail’s” stunner of a final shot. Weeds may come to overtake the roads we’ve trodden, but they’re still a part of us.
"Tigertail" is rated PG for some thematic elements, language, smoking and brief sensuality.
Starring: Tzi Ma, Christine Ko, Fiona Fu
Directed by: Alan Yang
2020
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