Stories about lower-class workers from different countries coming to America to find better jobs will always be interesting to me and throwing in a multi-generational, coming-of-age story does not hurt, either. Alan Yang's directorial debut Tigertail is an undeniably compelling look at a young man's journey and desire to move to America but, unfortunately, failed to really connect with me on any level due to its weak script and unmemorable characters. Based on the story of his own father, Yang's film is definitely quite personal to him but despite the charming uses of the camera, I could not get past how generic the entirety of this story was. Perhaps I am looking at this with too critical of an eye, but with how plastic this entire movie felt, it was hard for me to feel what Yang was attempting to convey. I always appreciate what streaming companies and modern studios do to promote up-and-coming filmmakers, but I also am not quite sure what else I was expecting from a Netflix original film of this variety that had so much potential otherwise.
Grover (Hong-Chi Lee) is a young man living in Taiwan who is being raised by his grandmother and eventually decides that he wants to leave his factory job to pursue a more profitable life in America. As he gets older (Tzi Ma), he must reconcile with his daughter Angela (Christine Ko) after being emotionally unavailable for her entire life. Some of the best parts of this film were its technicals, and especially in Nigel Bluck's cinematography. His camera work was phenomenal and there are so many interesting shots that particularly point out the environment in which these characters were living. I adored how the flashback scenes scattered throughout this film were shot on film while the modern scenes were shot digitally. This little detail was just a really bold, aesthetic choice that is hard to gloss over. However, Yang's storytelling is where I just failed to ever become attached. His writing made it hard for me to ever understand where any of these characters' minds were and many of this film's themes of growing up in some certain subplots were never fully explored. I understand that the point of the film was to portray how emotionally cold Grover was his entire life, especially to Angela, but due to the lack of characterization, I just honestly began to dislike him as a person entirely. Not even the mildly warm and comforting music from Zach Cowie was able to offset this unsettling tone and despite his intentions being in the right place, the message never stuck. Yang very deliberately knows the beats of a good, emotional story, but I just really wish the script could have stronger in order to back up his structuring abilities.
I can visibly tell how passionate Yang is about telling this story, especially for his debut feature, but the lack of detail just made everything appear disingenuous. It's very difficult to speak on the authenticity of a story like this since I am neither Alan Yang or his father, but whether or not this film was actually how Grover's life was, its representation was just frankly boring. Yang's writing in this movie is incredibly weak, as the dialogue and written characters never managed to make an impression on me. The dialogue was as generic as it could have been and after a good while, I honestly could not delineate between which of the characters were talking. The characters throughout this film were very flat as well, almost to the point of reducing them down to archetypes. This lack of strong characteristics left me feeling like every one of these characters was a supporting character and that we were just waiting for the actual protagonist to eventually show up. There was not nearly enough detail on any of these people and I became incredibly frustrated with how unremarkable of people they ended up becoming. I will always be a sucker for a multi-generational story such as Tigertail but it just really needs any amount of depth to it. We are never able to find out why Grover transitioned from a lively youth into his distant, older age and while we are led to believe it was because of his love life, it is never made clear enough. Don't get me wrong, this film does a great job of expressing an immigrant's culture shock and how its main character had troubles relating to his daughter her entire life, but do not expect any form of groundbreaking storytelling or anything that will remotely leave a mark on an audience member.
Alan Yang's Tigertail is a promising story with so much potential for generational greatness that was never really able to achieve said wonder. While I think the performances and cinematographic choices throughout this film were fabulous, they really only had a mediocre script to work with, thus making the entire film feel utterly dull. This story has been told countless times before, often in greater fashion and while the theme of family connection is obviously important to Yang, I just wish he could have focused on making his story seem not so painfully generic.
My Rating: ★★★
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