Tigertail takes time to unwind.
Pin-Jui has made sacrifices to build a better life. Years later, he replays them in his mind.
We’d never know it from his stone face. Even now, with his mother just having died alone in Taiwan, and with his daughter struggling to find happiness, does he set aside certain emotions to focus on the practical.
Only by piecing together closely-framed flashbacks can we understand why. Experiences of lost love and hard work show us a person who is anything but cold, who always tried to do the best by his poor mother.
Before these flashbacks, the movie is uncomfortable, even slow. Hyperrealistic editing and Pin-Jui’s stoicism create a boring melancholy, one that only hints at the feelings of a full life still being lived. But the tail does eventually unwind. In the end, we’ll know its curves, and watch as a new one forms. It is moving stuff.