Review: ‘A Sun’ is a Family Drama with Deep Meaning and Ethics

Mong-Hong Chung takes up screenwriting, directing, and cinematography to create “A Sun” (“Yangguang puzhao,” original title), a slow-burn Taiwanese drama about decisions, expectations, and fairness. In “A Sun,” a nuclear family unit of four falls victim to a number of tragedies. Though the repercussions come at once, these calamities were each a long time in the making. This family, torn apart, never stops trying to rebuild. Winning five ‘Golden Horse’ Film Festival’ awards, “A Sun” is an emotional and provocative film.

Written by Yaosheng Chang and Mong-Hong Chung, “A Sun’s” story is expertly structured and presented to the audience. This wonderful story explores deep themes, and is at its core a family drama that follows a mother, father, and two sons. The older son, A-Hao (Greg Han Hsu), is a medical student who always puts others before himself. The younger son, A-Ho (Chien-Ho Wu), is constantly getting in trouble and running with the wrong crowd. Their father, A-Wen (Yi-wen Chen), puts all his pride and hope in A-Hao, resulting in an unbalanced family dynamic. When A-Ho is sent to a juvenile detention center and his young girlfriend turns up pregnant, only the mother, Miss Qin (Samantha Shu-Chin Ko) is left to pick up the pieces and attempt to repair her family.

“Seize the day. Decide your path” is A-Wen’s mantra and the guiding principle through the film. We see each character making deliberate decisions that shape their own paths as they each try to do what’s right. There are no passive characters in this film. Every character is fully three-dimensional. We see little glimmers into pieces of their lives but always know there is more we aren’t seeing. These are fully fleshed out characters with past, presents, and futures beyond the film we’re watching. They feel fully real. “A Sun” feeds the viewers details about the characters slowly as the film goes and never resorts to information-dumps.The character’s intimate feelings and intricate inner-workings are never flat out said but revealed between the lines.

Chien-Ho Wu in a scene from “A Sun” (photo: Mandarin Vision, 2019).

Every actor in this film gives an A plus performance, completely believable in their respective roles. Each of them fully become their characters. Especially worthy of note is Chen-Ling Wen who plays Xiao-Zhen. Though a minor role, Xiao-Zhen, the romantic interest of A-Hao, is a character that is seemingly unimportant. In a short scene midway through the film’s run-time, she delivers a powerful show-stopping performance that reveals the film’s heart and the meaning behind the film’s title. Her moment in the film is the bow on top of this wonderfully wrapped film.

“A Sun” does not just have a masterfully-told story but also cinematography that captures attention. Practical lighting is used to full-effect in the production, most notably in the car garage scenes. The film favors wide shots that fully show the beautiful settings and landscapes. The film is cut up with aerial shots that display Taiwan’s sublime greenery. “A Sun” is a rare work of art where every single frame is meant to entertain the eye. It seems Mong-Hong Chung can really do it all.

The runtime is 2 hours and 36 minutes. It’s not a quickly-paced movie, but it’s also never boring and never feels like it’s dragging out. A mature but not pretentious film, “A Sun” never confuses the audience with its complexities. The film is very digestible and easy to recommend to people who may not have seen a Taiwanese picture before: your emotional investment will be rewarded. Awful things happen to this family throughout the film; but, despite that, the film never feels dreary or depressing. There is humor throughout and its characters never give up. They seize the day. They decide their paths.