Crown Shyness

After three years away, Nian’s mother Ling returns to Taiwan. She has cancer. When Nian picks her up at the airport, it’s clear that mother and daughter share a kind of unspoken understanding. The daughter’s lesbian relationship with Zai is an open secret that Mother Ling neither comments on nor uses to set any expectations. Instead, a certain laissez-faire attitude seems to be the norm. But then Ling dies; her death comes suddenly, and Nian’s grandmother Hao, who knows nothing of Nian’s partner and seems to adhere to rather traditional notions of gender roles, moves in with her. What follows is an emotional rollercoaster of cozy familiarity with her grandmother and fears about coming out—as well as some unexpected discoveries—including details about Ling’s love life in China.

Incidentally, the term “crown shyness” describes the remarkable phenomenon that some trees always keep their distance from the crowns of neighboring trees. In this wonderfully nuanced, highly contemporary three-generation drama, Chang Chun-yu explores how we humans might, here and there, grow closer to one another once again. Thank you!