What I Liked
- the sci fi/future aesthetics
- the actors did a good job
- making viewers think about differences between gender, sex and sexual orientation, I find this graphic useful https://au.reachout.com/articles/the-difference-between-gender-sex-and-sexuality
Room For Improvement
- things were just a little too open/not clearly stated, for example, Yi An asks Zhou Yang Kai if he'd like Yi An to be a woman but Zhou Yang Kai doesn't actually respond clearly either way. The ending is fairly open as well, I guess we can infer Yi An's choice but showing Yi An making the selection would have been good so viewers were clear about the decision.
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Acting/Cast: Nothing remarkable to note.
Music: Nothing remarkable to note.
Rewatch Value: Maybe if only to clarify some of the scenes that suffered from poor editing or script writing.
Overall: The short film attempts to deconstruct gender stereotypes, by imagining a world where we can choose our gender as a part of a standard program, where identifying with another gender that you are born with, will be the norm, but the execution falls short of its aim.
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Good food for thought
I really like the setting of this short film. It offers the possibility of a future where gender transition is actually supported by the government, but it's always inside the limits of the gender binary - not only on a biological level, but also on a social level.Yi An is almost 17 years old and will soon get his one-in-a-lifetime chance to choose the gender they will want to be for the rest of their life. As they interact with their best friend Wen Hua and their crush Zhou Yang Kai, their doubts keep increasing.
The events are kept vague, but also detailed enough to let the viewer reflect on what is happening in the film and make their own conclusion, which I liked a lot as I believe it mirrors the uncertainty of Yi An's feelings toward themself, toward the choice they're meant to make, and toward the people around them. I don't want to include spoilers, so I'll only add this: I believe that when the film ended, we got all the information we needed about the characters and their thoughts, and that anything else would have been unnecessary.
The actors all did an amazing job (Hsiang En Hung as Yi An, Audrey Fong as Wen Hua, and Ptero Li as Zhou Yang Kai). Props to Hsiang En Hung in particular for being able to portray Yi An's inner turmoil so beautifully.
I really liked the music used for this short and the camera angles. I also really liked the idea of using both a masculine and a feminine voice for Yi An's thoughts/narration, alternating the two or even using both at the same time.
It's a nice little piece of art. Recommended!
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