Until the subtitles of the film disappeared, it was still difficult to believe that the film "Island of Rivers" was a TV movie. In 2016, the film won the Golden Bell Award for "Miniseries/TV Movie Awards".
The island here does not explicitly refer to the treasure island of Taiwan, but is a metaphor for every toll booth in the highway toll booth. In order not to interfere with the traffic flow on the highway, the toll collector in the film needs to enter the toll booth through an underground passage and then enter the toll booth through a narrow spiral staircase. Each toll booth in the toll booth is relatively independent, like a small island in the traffic flow.
This is just the most intuitive feeling that the film brings at the beginning. Director Zhan Jinglin wants the audience to see more, perhaps those "families" and individuals who seem to exist in society and the collective, but are like living on an isolated island. He used the background of the era when toll collectors were massively unemployed due to ETC reforms, symbolizing the life of these little people who are difficult to control themselves.
In the film, three people form a short-lived "family". The mother Ah Wen, played by Yin Xin, is a highway toll collector, the son Yan Chao is a middle school student, and the father Zhihao, played by Zheng Renshuo, is a truck driver. The family went from formation to disintegration, but it was only a month.
Throughout the film, it is the feelings that Ah Wen and Yan Chao have experienced separately. Ah Wen's feelings are even more because Yan Chao made underage sexual acts driven by emotions. Yan Chao and the rich girls in the same class stole the forbidden fruit, and Ah Wen was asked for high compensation by the girl's father, and if she did not comply, she would be "sued to death". Ah Wen, who is low-income and has no savings, has to embark on the road of erotic trading in order to raise money, and Zhihao, who claims to be a small open and shows his love for Ah Wen at the toll booth for a long time, is naturally an ideal object.
They are all truly vulnerable in life. Although Zhihao drives in his brother's company, he does not worry about eating and wearing, and can spend all day drinking, but he is attached to his brother and sister-in-law, and even if he enters the house to eat at home, he will be blinded by his sister-in-law. Ah Wen does not have many friends in the company, and the only friend is also different because of the different concepts on the issue of severance pay. Yan Chao is a "bad boy" in school, and teachers and classmates are somewhat avoidant.
Originally living on an isolated island, their huddled warmth is only based on fragile foundations. When Zhihao is cut off from his financial resources by his brother and sister-in-law, and when Yanchao knows about his mother's erotic transaction, the split becomes inevitable.
After the split, everything did not return to the bad state of a month ago. Life is not satisfactory nine times out of ten, from the beginning of the formation of the "family" is destined to be divided, perhaps did not wait for a perfect ending, the harvest is the epiphany of life, everyone with a new attitude to meet the new life.
Equally excellent as the story is the interpretation of the characters by the two lead actors, Yin Xin and Zheng Renshuo.
Yin Xin, as a single mother, has made three transformations. At the beginning of the film, she is a toll collector who can still seek the joy of life. After learning of her child's mistake, she began to struggle and be anxious. After the first erotic transaction with Zhihao, it turned into pain and depression. Zhihao gradually got closer and closer to her and her children, and she found hope to survive in the "muddy waters". However, after driving Zhihao away in the end, Ah Wen realizes that she has developed love for him. When despair and pain reach their peak, she finally chooses to face everything in life with Yan Chao. Yin Xin won the best actress at the 2017 Taipei Film Festival with her accurate grasp of the role at different stages.
In contrast, Zheng Renshuo's character Zhihao is not easy to get the audience's like, but the change in the character's personality is more obvious. At first, Zhihao cynically put his sister in the bar without a face, which was a greasy and even somewhat disgusting image. In the end, hurt by love, dozens of missed phone calls destroyed his persistence, holding his brother crying bitterly, and finally calm and warm eyes for Ah Wen, and there was a 180-degree change from the character image of the opening paragraph. Zheng Renshuo's interpretation in the first half is slightly exaggerated, no matter what he is doing, he has a nervous embarrassing smile on his face, and there are fewer changes in the face of different people. But because of this, he is deeply affectionate and indifferent at the end of the film, which is even more moving. Being shortlisted for the "Best Actor Award" in the main competition unit of the 11th FIRST Youth Film Festival is an affirmation of his acting skills.
According to director Zhan Jinglin, under the limited time and cost, the script creation of the film was only written for 3 weeks, and the shooting was only 12 days, and the flaws in the film were naturally many. Especially in the film, there are a large number of shots shooting Ah Wen's emotional expression, so that the overall narrative logic does not have a relatively smooth advance, slow and fast. On the other hand, the performances of other supporting characters pull the protagonist's hind legs to a certain extent, and some shots show a slight timidity. However, "Island of Rivers", as his feature film debut, has reached a considerable height, and was selected for the "Amazing Debut" section of the 11th FIRST Youth Film Festival and was nominated for the "Best Director" of the main competition.
【Original title: [Personal Opinion] "Island of Streams": Everyone is an island】