Girls Always Happy

Director Yang Mingming
Year 2018
Country China
Runtime 1h 57m
Language Mandarin
TMDB View entry
Synopsis

Young screenwriter Wu (Yang Mingming, making her feature debut as writer, director, and star) lives with her aging mother (Nai An) in a hutong —one of the gradually disappearing residential alleyways of old Beijing. Having exhausted the money from her last script sale, Wu depends on the largesse of her boyfriend, a middle-aged film professor (Zhang Xianmin); the mother, a struggling writer herself, pins her hopes on the yet-to-be-written will of Wu’s grandfather (Huang Wei). Yang’s follow-up to her brilliant short FEMALE DIRECTORS (2012) eschews its mockumentary format but extends its play with levels of performance, shrewdly exploring the different faces Wu and her mother present to the world as their own relationship swings between extremes of affection and bitterness: two generations of women in a turbulent common front against life’s indignities and disappointments. – Josh Martin, Programmer

Listed at AFS

Archived on the AFS site between Mon, Nov 29 2021 and Sat, May 25 2024, across 5 captures. These dates are inferred from Wayback Machine captures and may not be accurate.

Mon, Nov 29 2021 Fri, Aug 19 2022 Sun, Feb 5 2023 Fri, Dec 8 2023 Sat, May 25 2024