‘To Be Ordinary’ Review: A Compassionate, Even-Handed Taiwanese Family Melodrama

A high-speed traffic accident leaves a college student in a wheelchair for life, but that’s merely the starting point of the narrative in “To Be Ordinary,” a sensitive, slowly enveloping film with scant interest in disability-drama cliché — instead offering an expansive portrait of how the young man’s entire family is affected by his accident over the course of more than a decade. Spanning marital strife, economic upheaval, coming-of-age pains and moral crisis, Taiwanese writer-director Lee Yun Chan‘s fourth feature — her first since 2010’s “Dancing Without You” — has a lot of story to wrangle, but does so with a mostly delicate, empathetic touch, with a script that treats all individuals in this unhappy scenario with equal care and interest.

Since her last film, Lee has done mostly small-screen work — directing, among other things, the 2022 Disney+ series “Women in Taipei” — and if a certain televisual strain of melodrama occasional creeps into “To Be Ordinary,” the film’s sturdy formal restraint and expansive story scope should still serve it well in cinemas. Following its premiere as the only Taiwanese production in Busan’s main competition, the film will play at the Tokyo Film Festival later this month, opening theatrically in Taiwan in mid-November. Further festival play is likely, particularly in Asian-focused programs, and the film is accessible and moving enough for limited global distribution, though specialist streaming platforms may be its best bet.

Lee, who co-wrote the screenplay with “Women in Taipei” scribe Ginger Wang, wastes little time setting the story into motion, opening on a lovely, gliding nighttime tracking shot of 22-year-old Yu-jie (Junior Hsieh) on his moped, cruising the rain-slicked roads of suburban Taipei, as the grandiose strings of Cicada’s score conjure a false feeling of serenity. DP Ming Lee’s camera will certainly never be this free again; the reverie stops short when, at an intersection, Yu-jie is struck by a car, driven by the wealthy, elderly Mr Ma (Hsiu Shen Liang), who’s immediately beset with irremediable guilt.

Yu-jie survives the accident but soon learns, in hospital, that he’ll never walk again; a college student who has already started his own web design business, he accepts the bad news with remarkable stoicism, quickly adapting to life in a wheelchair and seeking ways to live the most normal, productive life possible — which includes a budding relationship with young hospital physiotherapist Yi-Han (Phoebe Chu).

If anything, the rest of his family has a harder time adjusting. His mother (Chang Shih Ying) and father (Weber Yang) were already at a fraught point in their marriage, and their son’s plight only drives them further apart, the situation exacerbated by Dad’s longtime unemployment. Meanwhile, Yu-jie’s younger sister Yu-ching (Pin Hsuan Chen), already burdened with the hormonal turmoil of early adolescence, feels sidelined by the tragedy — pressured to look after herself while, as her mother puts it, “there’s enough going on at home” — and begins to lash out.

At a pragmatic level, the family is aided by Mr Ma’s crushing conscience: In addition to the required legal settlement, he transfers ownership of his entire house to Yu-jie, and continues to contribute generously toward his medical bills and living expenses. But such generosity can itself become a burden of sorts to the benefactor, particularly as Mr Ma retreats into old age and ill health; avoiding drawing its characters along victims-and-villains lines, “To Be Ordinary” reserves compassion for all in this wretched turn of events, which gives it welcome dramatic complexity and maturity, particularly as the story spans 11 years of evolving consequences.

Thoughtful, closely-knit ensemble playing keeps the family dynamic believable even when the script takes a few convenient short cuts: Chen is especially affecting and volatile as a young woman growing up both as a kind of afterthought, and as a support system to her flailing parents. Lee directs proceedings with a handsome sobriety that befits the material, though between the persistently overcast visuals and the solemnly emotive writing, “To Be Ordinary” could stand an occasional injection of tonal surprise — an acknowledgement of the occasional absurdity, hilarity or small domestic joys that come with hard times. Still, the film is never glib or unconsidered: there’s unassuming beauty in its even-handed, fair-minded worldview, and the space it gives its characters to reckon with sorrow, and find their own way out of it.