Heracin

This very short film (only 28 minutes) is mostly a slice-of-life within a Taiwanese family with siblings who reunites for their mother's birthday. The story is centred around one main question: will the gay son comes clean to his mom ? Given the short duration, there is not a lot of content but the film does a good job setting up the stakes for the various characters.

In terms of casting, I feel that the actress playing the mother did the best job in interpreting with nuances her role. You feel her stress and care for her family. I was slightly less convinced by the actor playing her son, I felt the chemistry was a bit lacking in his couple. Still, he manages to be very real in displaying the emotions and hesitations of his character.

The film felt very indie: there are clearly on a budget but the decors and filmmaking was totally suitable for a proper storytelling. The ending song was nice but not memorable.

I would recommend this to people looking for a short BL indie movie. The question approached by the story feel very real and the way it is discussed makes sense. I did not find it very captivating as it was too short to feel connected with the characters. It is of course a very personnal opinion as I think it could really touch the heart of some other viewer. As it is very short, give it a shot ! I enjoyed learning about what Komorebi means.