NYAFF XXV Review: In A DANCE WITH RAINBOWS, A Fistful Of Hope
A Dance With Rainbows enjoyed its North American Premiere at the 25th edition of the New York Asian Film Festival.
Every once in a while, I stumble upon a boxing drama that catches my eye, so I couldn’t help but take notice of director Lee Yi-Shan’s A Dance Of Rainbows. The film marks Lee’s directorial debut after directing a few shorts in the last several years, and also marks a first feature for its lead star, Lin Yi-Ting, and I would have never guessed that her first film would have her putting in some serious work for fans of inspirational fight flicks.
Written by Lee and co-scribe Ho Ping, this cinematic tale follows Ling (Lin Yi-Ting), a twenty year-old up-and-coming boxer whose world is mired in questions about what a “normal” family is. She lives in a spacious, albeit dilapidated home is where she lives with her brother Yi (Justin Tien). She also works there as her mother, Eur’e (Lotus Wang) toils away in the kitchen for their lunchbox service for which Ling delivers, and where father Shan – or “Sam” (Yu An-Shun), who coaches table tennis and works in antique restoration, lives out his abject existence often coming and going with his mistress, Mei (Chienna Lee).
There’s a scene early in the film where Shan introduces Ling to said mistress, and I couldn’t help but chuckle at the line that Ling threw out. Immediately, you get the vibe between father and daughter, and as the film progresses and stakes escalate, there’s a mild breaking point that the friction leads to which brings the movie to a sense of completion. It’s all par for the course for Ling’s story though, as it also entails life at the local gym where she trains under Papa Tai (Tsai Chen-Nan) where you get the impression that her coach is seemingly the closest thing she and her boxing mates have to something of a father figure.
Balancing all these aspects of her live tend to weigh on her, if only for the fact that her family has yet to acknowledge the years of myopic trauma and abuse that truly keeps them from bonding like an actual family. It’s a core theme that gets explored through at least one avenue of behavior that’s also exhibited when it comes to Ling’s boxing prospects, particularly when she finds out that Papa Tai has been dealing under the table, having his boxing prospects adhere to “understandings” in order to help keep the gym afloat, writing off the beleaguring practice as something not to be concerned with as long as the pay is good.
All these things culminate into a heavy and transformative profile of a young woman’s coming-of-age search for her own truth in A Dance Of Rainbows, a search that also includes pulling out a book from rubble beneath a tree. The message at the crux of Lee’s film is one that takes a look at what it means to end vicious and toxic cycles that impede one’s pursuit of happiness. Exemplary of this can especially be seen with regards to Eur’e and Shan.
Scant flashbacks convey fleeting, albeit ample insight into past transgressions leading up to the film’s current timeline, evocative of the little things that aggregate much of the turmoil that Ling trudges through to keep her real pain silent no matter how much she expresses her grievances. The biggest culprit here is the frequent impasse she has with her father who can’t ever seem to pull his head out of his ass these days, no matter whatever love he touts to have for his family. This particular thing is a trait that comes symptomatic with the prolonged lack of accountability that really puts things in an essential spotlight for the viewer, making Ling’s journey an all-encompassing one for viewers.
Ancillary screen support from actors Lin Yu-Chia, Huang Wei, and Linus Zeng contribute formidably to Lee’s potent cast of young talents at the center of the boxing spectacle. Boxing and action sequences by Chen Chia-Ling and Teddy Ray Huang are exciting to watch. The hits are stacked really well, and the actors’ training really shows in these efforts, specifically for our the film’s star whose fight scenes, coinciding with an impressive and sharp script, detail the staging and tapering of Ling’s boxing as a modifer for what makes A Dance With Rainbows such a powerful story from start to finish.
Native New Yorker. Been writing for a long time now, and I enjoy what I do. Be nice to me!
