Sincere but Sorrowful to a fault, Master of none co-creator Alan Yang‘s feature directorial debut, Tigertail is a movie whose magic is routinely undercut by its own director. This movie is directed by Alan Yang. and Cast is Tzi-Ma, Hong-Chii Lee, Christine Ko, Joan Chen, Yo-Hsing Fang, Kuei-Mei Yang, Kunje Li, Fiona Fu. A little over 90 minutes long but with the potential to sustain itself for at least an hour longer, Tigertail feels like something Harvey Weinstein might have cut together in the 90s, against the will of the filmmaker, perhaps with an army of lawyers hovering about the room.
But the Tigertail isn’t a Miramax film form 1996 although the influence of Hou Hsaio-Hsien and Ang Lee is palpable it is a Netflix movie Circa 2020. And have been whatever freedom Yang must have been given feels slightly squandered It tells the story of a first-generation immigrant from Taiwan, who left his old life of hardship behind for a new one that is considerably sadder.
TIGERTAIL – As a youth, Pin-Jui made the most of what he had. He worked so hard, was known to be a chatterbox, and would sneak out on nightly adventures with the woman he loved. As an old man in America, he is near-silent, divorced, and estranged from his only daughter, poised to live out the rest of his life alone.
Tigertail intercuts between the past and present with very little grace. Observed independently, each of the two timelines is wonderful, but such is the stylistic and tonal difference between the two halves that they never come together as a cohesive whole.
