Increasing Echo(HKAFF 2021)

For those itching to see Chienn Hsiang’s follow-up to his award-winning directorial debut of Exit, the seven-year wait is finally over. The Taiwanese filmmaker’s sophomore feature revolves around Mrs Yan, an er-bourgeois Taipei taitai who hugs trees, hums hymns and hit singing bowls to maintain some kind of mental equilibrium. Such pretensions of tranquility could never mask her anguish over the expose of her husband’s extra-marital affair from years ago. When she learns of his ex-mistress’ slide into dementia, she thinks this will be her triumphant closure — never to imagine this would unleash the most challenging test yet in her journey towards nirvana. A powerful meditation of middle-age, middle-class anxiety set in the middle of an epidemic, Increasing Echo offers a crescendo of emotions via Chienn’s poetic transformation of estrangement into beauty, and Chen’s masterful evocation of a woman navigating the mysterious ways of modern life.