Mulheres Ocultas

A drama from Taiwan. It is about a woman and her daughters who must perform the funeral rites of their ex-husband and father, unleashing the pain and kept secrets. Quality. Hard. Reflexive. Daily. Interpretative. Parsimonious in the extreme. At times you feel that nothing happens in more than two hours of movies, you must stay until the end. Talk about letting go of things from the past that hurt us, about forgiveness and love. About those things that we hope for and live each day being happy despite life's situations. Of family relationships and their disruptions. A detail that, as they all look alike, some stories become confusing and that some moments you must interpret. A film that shows that a woman's heart is a sea of love and secrets.

Personally, I was very emotional throughout many scenes in this movie. Mainly because I am a Chinese to Canada immigrant. The countless words in English cannot describe what I felt and what I am feeling after I watched this film. I felt connected, and for the first time, emotionally invested in this film. Although it is a Taiwanese film, our culture is not too different. I felt warmth from this movie, sadness, nostalgia, and it was, in a sense, relatable. If I did not have the background I do, I wouldn't be giving this movie such a high rating. The plot wasn't especially exceptional, and a lot of things may be confusing. However, it really tugs on my heartstrings. It opens my eyes to family connections, about letting go, and really impacted me because of certain experiences in real life. Overall, I found this a great film, but that is a complete personal opinion.

It was like a glass of wine that I was not hurry to drink but just watching it slowly filled up. At first, I just felt a little bitter in my throat but then it had a powerful aftereffect which made my rims of eyes red with unstoppable grievances, sadness and tears. Everyone had different memory about the past and as time past by, only the true emotion and feeling were left. At the same time, these emotion and feeling were so individual that they crashed into each other. The heroine was an aggrieved woman and she was also a strong mother. She decided to vanish all those love and hatred deep inside her heart at her husband's funeral without attendance. But her grievances have landed in my mind. Although this story ended in harmonious had some ridiculous plots, it was exactly the blandness and doughtiness that the heroine showed during her life, the contradiction and harmony in this little family, the perfect performance of the leading actress, and all the just-right and full emotion, made this sincere film so addicted.

As another reviewer already stated, there are certain universal truths that ring true to everyone, no matter where you are from or how you lived. Well for most that is - because family and the relationships therein are always complicated. There is always love of course (at least a little bit of that), but there is also a lot of regret ... how and where you go when one of the pieces go missing (expires/dies, however you want to put it).

It may confuse a little bit, but the drama is worth it. This is for everyone who likes things to be "real life" and feel as real as possible. Secrets get revealed, passions exposed and other things that were under the surface. Now while that might sound exciting and powerful - it is, but not in a strong fast way, but rather a slow paced burning ... if you can dig that, you'll love the movie. If not ... well it's obvious isn't it.

I have to wholeheartedly compliment reviewer blaze32646 February 2021 for his/her "A slow moving film about letting go" review; a rare great in-depth analysis of how it should have been done more properly and why it's a huge miss of making this movie a greater and better movie.

The movie didn't completely tell the backstory of why that husband/father had become estranged to his wife/daughters, why the wife/mother still gave a damn to her betrayed/estranged husband and as a husband/father. it also failed to show us how this woman had been forced into a single parent mother, how his betrayal, his heartless cruelty impact the family he left behind. What's the reason he betrayed his wife/daughters? An adulterer for another woman? If so, can you believe this wife-by-marriage would forgive him? Schopenhauer On "Woman" claimed that Woman in Love is far weaker than woman in Hate; a woman in love and hate is far barbaric than most men. There's no way to correct such fact that this Mamma San in particular had evolved and transcended to a kinder and more generous female.

Therefore, once her persistence of carrying out the farewell ritual to her husband is quite obscure and argumentatively controversial, this movie could only have achieved a small part of a bigger picture. But nonetheless, still a not so bad nor so great or so unique movie.