By Dominic Preston.
This Taiwanese film explores isolation and estrangement in the modern era through the increasingly lonely Ling (Chen Shiang-Chyi). She is the picture of modern isolation: Neither her husband nor her daughter answer their phones when she calls, she sits apart from her co-workers at lunch, and the centre of her meagre social life is her visits to her mostly silent hospitalised mother-in-law.
From this position of utter separation from the rest of society, she begins to claw back, first through tango classes and later through her furtive attempts to nurse the man occupying the hospital bed opposite her mother-in-law. Ling at first simply soothes the unconscious patient, but takes more and more pleasure in the intimacy of the care itself, enjoying the connection with anyone else, even limited as it is.
Exit is as restrained as its own protagonist, which is at times to the film’s detriment. Just as Ling keeps herself detached from the world, observing rather than engaging, so the camera tends to retain a respectful distance, keeping the viewer out of the action. Unfortunately, this same distance prevents the script from ever being truly satisfying. We’re never given a sense of why either the dancing or the bed-ridden patient should hold such allure for Ling, or why we should care.
The film requires patience, but offers little reward for it, with no emotional payoff waiting in the wings. The striking ending leaves the film with a powerful and ambiguous closing note, but is ultimately too little, too late to make up for the film’s often unengaging core.
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