MY ELDER BROTHER IN TAIWAN：An Intimate Small Canvas

Derek ELLEY  is Chief Film Critic of Film Bussiness Asia. Elley has been writing about East Asian cinema for almost 40 years,especially Chinese-language films,and has arranged numerous seasons and tributes both in the UK, at London\'s National Film Theatre,and elsewhere, at Washington\'s American Film Institute. In 1998 he co-founded the Far East Film Festival, in Udine, Italy, devoted to mainstream Asian cinema.

PINOY SUNDAY (2009), the first feature by Malaysian-born  director Ho Wi Ding, was slim but very likeable, and the same adjectives could be applied to his second full-length movie, MY ELDER BROTHER IN TAIWAN. A gentle comedy-of-manners about a  sister who visits her elder brother after a gap of 60 years - only to find he\'s hiding a guilty secret - says far more in its simple, unambitious way about the emotional side of cross-straits family reunions than, say, the recent food movie JOYFUL REUNION. It also shows Ho, though still painting on an intimate, small canvas, developing from his origins as a short film director into a feature film-maker.

Despite being divided into five chapters (Sunday to Friday) that span the visit by a doctor, Pan Huafeng, and her daughter Li Yingchen to her elder brother Pan Hua-chin in Kaohsiung, it\'s actually far less episodic than PINOY SUNDAY. The latter film charted two Filipinos trying to move a red sofa through the streets of Taipei one afternoon, and was basically an allegory about the "outsider" status to the island. MY ELDER BROTHER has a much stronger emotional arc running through the movie as Hua-chin does his financial utmost to ensure his relatives have a good time but hides the fact that he\'s actually a menial worker at a hotel who has almost no money at all.

The audience is told about his secret early on, and the film becomes a low-key comedy as Hua-chin narrowly escapes being found out time and again. Directed in an unfussy but well-composed way, MY ELDER BROTHER is all the more moving for its absence of buckets of emotion and leaving more things unsaid than said, and the simple musical score supports director Ho\'s light touch.