Kuei-mei, a Woman

Kuei-mei arrives in Taiwan in the nineteen fifties. There she marries a widower with three unruly children and a habit of gambling. The marriage starts her from a disadvantaged place. In the years that follow come pregnancies, her husband’s infidelity and her daughter’s resentment. For a period she goes to Japan and works as a servant. Then come divorce and illness. Through all of it she is trying to keep the family restaurant going. The family restaurant is the one thing she keeps hold of throughout. The film tells a woman’s life year by year, without marking any single part of it as the turning point. Loretta Yang Hui-shan takes the lead, with Lee Li-Chun also in the cast, in Chang Yi’s Taiwanese film of 1985, a hundred and nineteen minutes long.