Her Time Flows Into Our Room, Leaving Behind an Echo of Tumult.
Translated by Wen-chieh LAI
“What am I doing?” is the first thing we need to answer, even before we say our names whether in films, or when meeting new people. The answer is often our occupation, the job title for which we are paid. Yet when human interaction becomes a mere quid pro quo, treating synergy as a game, our actions risk resembling those of robots, zombies, or ghosts— that is, the condition of alienation. From the brink of this alienation circle, when we break free from the line, there emerges an instant acceleration and an escape from the circle. That escape is what we can truly grasp as existence.
I recall one of the stories, The Life of Heart-Breaking Human (傷心人類學七辣), from my novel when I watch Fwends. In my novel, the younger generation strongly identifies with brokenness and fluid lifestyles in society. People make analogies or share in-jokes about political correctness when teasing each other. This atypical form of trash talk reveals glimpses of genuineness, as if hoping to pierce through the vocabulary of a generation, capturing both the beauty and the complexity of friendship’s essence.
At that same age, in Fwends, one protagonist is a lawyer who suffers harassment in the workplace; the other, once a stripper, sets forth on a working holiday. In the room, their interactions carry both faint universality and striking specificity, and their conversations unfold like lines from a talk show. The interplay is at once private and public, intellectual and rhythmic, with improvised tensions that reverse expectations, bringing imagination into the plot. Within these moments, thrill and pleasure glimmer in subtle ways. The story of Melbourne, in this sense, could just as easily be a story of Taipei.
In this era, “how to relax” could even become a form of competition. Many interpretations of mental disorders have been diluted, stripped of their labels, until numbness itself becomes the cheapest cost to one’s mentality. Behind the “privatization of anxiety,” there should still be an individual standing apart from society while people are weary of seeing things from that perspective. In the gaze of Action Item, every character seems rational and restrained, shedding emotion, embodying an extreme rationality, efficiency, and the capitalist virtue of tidiness and order, carried out to completion. Perhaps it is to avoid the dramatics of the self, exhausting itself in the process; or perhaps it suggests that everything is no longer tied to emotion, not even to personal anxiety.
Checking the action items makes people think of the dazzling implements of production claims—this small act becomes a release for the brain, optimizing the mission to meet the demands of multitasking, a survival skill in modern society. Paid subscriptions carry the aura of high-value production; their sales eloquence borders on fiction, yet many people internalize accountability and blame themselves. Action Item gazes instead at the Ferris Wheel, guiding the audience with a nonverbal voice that echoes in hindsight. The entire film feels like resistance, though not entirely, returning the state of existence to where poetry itself seems to reside.
Removal of the Eye with its sardonic edge, reminds us of the uncontrollable anxiety born of excessive information, fueled by rapidly evolving technology, and mirrored in the roles of young parents today. The challenges of care become imperative: parents must learn an ever-widening array of complexities, such as the pros and cons of three generations living under one roof. The subject of raising a child may seem trivial, yet here it fuses subtly with the pulse of electronic music and the cadence of exorcism. As an intellectual, the protagonist embodies identity intersectionality, which might be transformed into cultural capital; yet this unfolds in a frantic rush to balance academic and professional life, at immense cost. Parenting becomes a mess beneath the pressure to appear elegant. People must turn a blind eye, whether through the lens of virtue or fault. Switching off the meeting room, the exorcism ritual begins. Dismissing it all with laughter, if only for the moment.
I have a soft spot for Victoria when the characters call each other “Chechi,” meaning “sister” in Malayalam. It creates a sense of intimacy through language—perhaps because I romanticized the scenario out of cultural differences. The daily circumstances of women, across different backgrounds, may place them in positions of higher or lower status; yet as pressure accelerates, they must find a release at low cost. It turns out that the hair salon offers a path leading to the same outcome. A salon is not merely a place for styling; it grants people a sense of dignity and care at an affordable price. Human touch is essential. A gentle touch in the salon allows one to pause, to rest softly.
The most valuable aspect in this quid pro quo is the work of emotion and affection. The character reversals in Victoria are not limited to the one-way relationship between service provider and client; rather, the acts of gazing into the mirror and sprucing up become a mutual experience we share. Customers are willing to observe and to listen to the hairstylist’s bitterness, offering support in return. A customer might let the stylist eat first, or notice the scar of violence on the stylist’s face that no one else has recognized. There is no excess of sentiment—only the clarity of personal boundaries, as women perform their own duties and stand united together.
When most of us are unwilling to let touch become a luxury, Familiar Touch continues to follow human life almost to its end, the moment when the body’s functions fade, and even memory and cognition slip away. We do not merely long for a new atmosphere, nor do we wish to immerse ourselves in tragic loneliness or frivolously confront the inevitability of aging. More often, we hope to imagine from the perspective of “myself”—to live and survive within the state of dementia. The opening scene of Familiar Touch shows an elderly lady dressed impeccably, heading out on her date. This is the reality of subjectivity. The “touch” itself brings delight, even a pounding of the heart, no matter who the counterpart may be.
Some scholars consider the physical entity to be grounded in the foundation of three-dimensional space, rather than in a traditional single temporal dimension. The existence of dementia suggests that people may hold many different versions of themselves, shifting roles and identities in the aging process, as if inhabiting random ages across a lifetime. This can also be read as a subversive, hypothetical metaphor. The old lady, exercising for rehabilitation in the pool, moves in a peaceful loop. Her floating becomes a private sanctuary.
Nightshift was made forty years ago, is a timeless classic, a theory concludes the program with the meaning of scenes and the labor of life. Every plot in the film unfolds as a chance encounter with guests, filling the room with moments of irritation and fleeting dreams. The expressionless concierge behind the counter becomes the film’s protagonist. The stiff movements hold every plot within a limited framework. As the film draws to its end, life continues and day breaks. The cycle is complete: each guest checks out, and the main character clocks off, pushing open the door—regaining, at last, the expression of being human.
As I watch Nightshift, the sounds in the film echo the daily noises of my own room. I am not sure whether I feel more comforted in my existence or erased; yet this kind of terror burns quietly within both the dynamic and the stagnant scenery. It feels as if, suddenly, I have the answers—the drifting tangential velocity fusing sensation and cognition into another dimension, sudden silence.
HSU En-En
A Taiwanese novelist, born in Kaohsiung and currently based in Taipei. The Becoming received the 2024 TLA New Bud Award and was shortlisted for Openbook Award. Her latest publication is In Between: The Woman and The Public.
