The Fourth Portrait

Chung Mong-hong

The story: After his father dies, 10-year-old Hsiao Hsiang (Pi Hsiao-hai) is left to fend for himself. His estranged mother (Hao Lei) turns up and takes him to live with her and her husband (Leon Dai). Hsiang finds his new home oppressive and also has strange dreams of the older brother he has not seen in more than six years. But life is not all grim and forbidding and he finds some joy in his friendship with a somewhat simple-minded deadbeat called “Big Gun”.

Lights, camera, act cute. It is easy to add a tyke to a film and then simply milk that adorableness for laughs. Think Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone (1990), Taiwanese child star Bin Bin in a number of 1980s comedies and the upcoming Little Fockers.

Films which genuinely look at the world from a child’s point of view are few and far between. Ponette (1996), about a little girl dealing with her mother’s death and Nobody Knows (2004), a heartbreaking and chilling story of abandoned children, come to mind.

Add to that select group writer-director Chung Mong-hong’s The Fourth Portrait. Despite his background in advertising, there is nothing slick or glib in how he paints this boy’s life.

In the early scenes when Hsiao Hsiang is left alone after his father’s death, Chung steers away from melodrama and just quietly observes the boy going about the business of living – playing alone, pilfering food and then picking up discarded goods with a surly janitor who keeps an eye out for him. A big reason why it all hangs together is Pi Hsiao-hai, 11, who was named the Best Actor at the Taipei Film Festival in July this year.

Chung draws out an unaffected and

affecting performance from the first- time actor. Hsiao Hsiang is a precocious boy who understands more than he lets on. But at the same time, he is also very much a child for whom a lot of things do not make sense. All that comes through in Pi’s portrayal.

The supporting cast is also top-notch. China actress Hao Lei won the Best Supporting Actress Golden Horse Award for her turn as the mother reconnecting with her child, though the part feels a little underwritten. Better yet, is the brooding menace actor-director Leon Dai brings to his role as the stepfather hiding a terrible secret.

The Fourth Portrait unfolds in unexpected ways and somehow manages to work in disparate elements of domestic

violence, a comic crime spree, family ties and even a ghost story. Chung ties the film together with four portraits drawn by Hsiang illustrating the different relationships in his life.

At the end of the film, Hsiang prepares to sketch his own face. It is an enigmatic moment that holds out promise and yet fraught with uncertainty as he stands on the cusp of knowledge and self-awareness. And the future remains tantalisingly undrawn.

(ST)