QUICK ‘ N DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN

A promise made and a promise broken is like the proverbial stone thrown into a serene pond in director Quentin Hsu and co-writer Chi-an Lin’s Taiwanese drama Admission. Suddenly, future plans are turned upside down, when parents Sun Qiang (Yo-nian Liu) and Li Wei (Yang Wang), receive a call from the prestigious Syd International School rejecting their six-year-old son, Sun Yu (Jiale Jin). Worst still is that a list of those rejected will be published on the school’s website. With time ticking away, their trusted admissions agent Mr Lang (Hongwei Wang) informs the couple that the list will not be published until the end of the day. The trio begin to try to find out what went wrong in the interview process for the seemingly perfect couple, and are joined by the Director Jo (Nai An) from the school, who had guaranteed Sun Yu a place.

Admission is a pleasing story in which the audience finds themselves in the private space of these characters. This is of course generally true about many films, but here, Hsu and Lin, and cinematographer Aymerick Pilarski, are overtly playing with voyeurism and eavesdropping. The framing and movement of the camera emphasises this, as Hsu and Pilarski shoot the characters at a distance through doorways and interior windows, and even use Li’s reflection in the mirror for one shot. The aesthetic, however, evolves to carry a more intriguing association. The way in which the camera resembles a wandering eye, lingering on the garden chair or watching the couple reciptocate in stroking one another’s backs, positions it not as the exclusive presence of Hsu and Pilarski, but an autonomous one that creates space for the audience to enter the film.

This 95-minute film is about the obsessive search for an answer to a simple question, whose answer is anything but simple. Hsu and Lin understand that telling this story is about luring in the audience and arousing their curiosity. At some point the audience have to be biting at the bit to find out what went wrong – sharing in the couple’s obsession. Hsu and Lin choose to not rush it. Instead, they let the curiosity gradually reach its peak. This is not to say that the audience’s curiosity is dormant, but they seem to time it so that when you quietly ask yourself what was said, it’s opportunistically timed to complement the film’s surprising crescendo.

Often films with self-contained locations, like Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope (1948) or Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men (1957) can feel like stage productions on the cinema screen. Admission, however, does not. The performances and the staging feel decidedly cinematic, although scenes where the action revolves around the still camera – and sometimes characters are only half in frame – correspond to the strict parameters of the stage. Meanwhile, the wandering camera mimmicks the autonomous human gaze of the audience at the theatre.

One of Admission’s compelling aspects is that Hsu and Lin appear disinterested in making either Sun Qiang and Li Wei likeable or sympathetic. The only notable characters that are intended to be likeable are Sun Yu and Mr Lang who shows integrity by rejecting the offer of extra payment by Li Wei. It’s not necessarily the intention to depict the couple and Director Jo as ogres, but it’s possible to sense privilege and class have inflated their sense of self-importance. Audiences are going to inherently be responsive to this because of the expanding wealth gap, and so, it might be too much to ask the audience to genuinely like them. However, the experience of rejection and uncertainty about the future are experiences that audiences can sympathise with, even if the sympathy Sun Qiang, Li Wei and Director Jo can illicit is limited.

Admission effectively explores the idea of how children can demonstrate greater wisdom than their elders, even when, in Sun Yu’s case he locks himself in the bathroom and just wants to hide in the bathtub. Admission also interrogates the complicated or layered relationship parents share with their children, and how it’s vulnerable to selfishness and narcissism.

There is, however, an awkward creative decision made at the beginning of the film. Here’s a screenwriting mantra: “Enter the scene as late into the action as possible, and leave the scene as soon as you can.” Admission’s opening doesn’t heed this advice. Instead, it reveals too much of the family dynamic and serves a different, less contained story to the one Hsu and Lin are ultimately telling.

Admission just premiered in First Feature Competition of the 29th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.