Venice Film Festival

'Girl', a coming-of-age story for Shu Qi's directorial debut

In competition, the debut feature behind the camera by the celebrated Taiwanese actress

5 September 2025

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Making her debut at (almost) fifty years of age: after a thirty-year career in front of the camera, renowned Taiwanese actress Shu Qi signed her debut feature, 'Girl', which found its place in the competition at the Venice Film Festival.

Best known for being the muse of Hou Hsiao-hsien, one of the masters of Asian cinema, with whom she collaborated in 'Millennium Mambo' (2001), 'Three Times' (2005) and 'The Assassin' (2015), Shu Qi had started her career working for nude magazines and erotic films, before becoming an important face of Far Eastern art-house cinema.

Born in Taipei in 1976, she experienced a childhood marked by economic hardship and many aspects of her life were an inspiration for her film directing debut.

Set in Taiwan in the late 1980s, the film is about a young girl who finds solace in her friendship with another girl who embodies the dreams she has repressed. Her aspirations, however, are challenged by her mother's past, which reflects her own difficulties and traps her in a vicious cycle of despair.

It is a classic female coming-of-age story, this film focusing on terrifying family dynamics, also marked by alcoholism and the violence of the father figure and a mother with whom one struggles to communicate.

Friendship with a female peer is perhaps the only possible form of salvation in a situation where the only hope of redemption can be realised by trying to get away from the domestic nest.

The atmospheres of new wave

In this film, one can breathe in the atmosphere of the famous Taiwanese new wave of cinema, a fundamental movement that developed during the 1980s and which, in addition to the aforementioned Hou Hsiao-hsien, counts the likes of Edward Yang among its main exponents.

Not only because of the setting in the late 1980s, but also because of the delicacy of the photography and the focus on the younger generation and family dynamics, the references and possible quotations are numerous.

Shu Qi, however, plays a little too much of a mannerist game, ending up with a well-crafted product that smacks too much of the familiar. The central part, above all, is excessively static and lacks any flashes or dramatic twists worthy of the name.

For a debut, one may well be content, but the presence in competition in Venice is indeed generous.

Una scena tratta dal film «Elisa» di Leonardo Di Costanzo

Elisa

Leonardo Di Costanzo's 'Elisa' was also presented in competition.

The title character is a thirty-five-year-old woman, in prison for ten years, convicted of murdering her elder sister and burning her corpse, for no apparent reason. She claims to remember little or nothing of the crime, as if she had lifted a veil of silence between herself and the past. But when she decides to meet the criminologist Alaoui and participate in his research, in a tense and relentless dialogue, memories begin to take shape, and in the pain of accepting her guilt to the full, Elisa glimpses, perhaps, the first step towards a possible redemption.

After the beautiful 'Ariaferma', Leonardo Di Costanzo returns to the subject of prisons, but this time opting for an 'open' location, in the middle of the woods, confirming himself as a very good director in the management of spaces.

'Elisa' is an interesting and incisive film, but it lacks the surprising strength of the previous feature by the Ischia-born director born in 1958.

The script has a more anonymous skeleton, although the writing of the main characters is excellent and, in particular, the description of the relationship between Elisa and her father is striking.

A special mention goes to Barbara Ronchi's excellent performance in one of the most difficult roles of her career: she deserves serious consideration for the Coppa Volpi for best female performance. In the role of the criminologist is the Frenchman Roschdy Zem, an actor in many transalpine films, including 'Roubaix, a light in the shadows' by Arnaud Desplechin or 'The innocent' by Louis Garrel.