The Fourth Portrait (2010)

Original title

第四張畫

Directed by

Chung Mong-hong

Genre

drama film

Country

Taiwan

Runtime

1h 45m

Rated

保護級

Rating

6.6 of 10 from 15 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A young boy named Xiao Xiang copes with the death of his father and is taken in by his mother and stepfather. The story unfolds through four drawings he makes, each revealing something about his life and the people around him.

sombercontemplativeintimatesparseunsettlingpoignantslow-burnmelancholic

What happens

The Fourth Portrait (Chinese: 第四張畫), released in 2010, is Taiwanese director Chung Mong-Hong's second feature film, following his critically acclaimed Parking (2008). The screenplay was co-written by Chung Mong-Hong himself and Tu Hsiang-wen. With its narrative revolving around the child protagonist, Xiao Xiang, portrayed by the then eleven-year-old actor Bi Xiao-Hai, the film draws inspiration from Chung's documentary film The Doctor from 2006. Specifically, the young boy, Wan Yu-Ho (aka Felix) depicted in The Doctor, tragically ended his life in his closet at a young age. Alongside Bi Xiao-Hai, whose cinematic debut won him the Best Actor Award at the Taipei Film Awards, The Fourth Portrait stars an impressively strong cast, including Chin Shih-Chieh, Hao Lei, Leon Dai, Nadow Lin, and Terri Kwan. Garnering much praise when it was screened at the Taipei Film Festival, The Fourth Portrait went on to receive seven major awards nominations at the Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards. While Chung Mong-Hong drew from his documentary film, The Doctor, to set the theme of The Fourth Portrait, the approach of organizing the narrative with four portraits sketched by Xiao Xiang originated from news coverage about child abuse resulting in death, as well as the experience of Chung searching for hand-drawn doodles by Wan Yu-Ho that could represent the deceased young boy's state of mind when he shot the documentary film, The Doctor. "Chung pays careful attention to lighting and colors, with cold blue grays offset by occasional saturated richness. Landscapes, and especially magical skies, reveal a painter’s palette of tones and provide an uplift when fate appears less generous." As Chung Mong-Hong meticulously incorporated and adapted the existing artwork into The Doctor and later transformed the same storytelling technique into The Forth Portrait, Chung's genuine and heartfelt approach toward Taiwanese society and his attentive observation of essential human compassion is revealed through the outstanding cinematography and the mastery of visual storytelling. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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