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Clarence Tsui

3/5 stars
Girls on Wire is first and foremost a showcase of Wen Qi’s versatility.
In the film, the Taiwanese actress originally known as Vicky Chen Wen-chi gets to emote as a maternal big sister, brood like an embittered avenger and go airborne and underwater as a swordswoman; she also switches between Sichuanese dialect and Mandarin with aplomb.
But what perks up Wen’s performance creates pitfalls for the film’s director, Vivian Qu.
Trading in tropes drawn from family melodramas, film noir and martial arts movies, Girls on Wire is inconsistent in tone and convoluted in its storytelling. Qu’s decision to unfurl the narrative using two intertwining timelines makes it more a blend of incoherent ideas than an inventive genre mash-up.


Filmed in Chongqing, southwest China, the film begins with Tiantian (Liu Haocun) locked in an underground cell, where she receives a heavy kicking and a forced injection of drugs at the hands of her captor. After a violent struggle, she accidentally slits the man’s throat before fleeing.
For her, salvation lies somewhere in Film City, a sprawling complex of sound stages and sets where her older cousin works.
A former soap opera star who has fallen on hard times, Fang Di (Wen) earns a living as a stuntwoman who struggles with the callous demands of abusive male directors.
Through flashbacks set in the 1990s and then explicit exposition in the characters’ dialogue in the here and now, we learn how Fang Di’s mother – who runs a sweatshop making counterfeit haute couture – is ruined by the debts her drug addict brother, Tiantian’s father, runs up.
Those debts, and some of their personality traits, are passed to their children. Grudgingly, Fang Di takes over Tiantian’s arrears, not knowing this would bring a pair of mobsters to their door.
The goons’ descent on Film City marks the point where Girls on Wire begins to wobble. Somehow, Qu decided to switch gears and play things for laughs, as we see the two louts, and their sidekick, sucked into a series of comical scenarios as they find themselves recruited as extras.

Qu seems to be having fun with such odes to Hong Kong cinema – one of many instances in which the director pays tribute to the city. Only a very fine line stands between imitation and pastiche, however.
Girls on Wire falls more on the side of the latter, thus condemning Qu to a surprising tumble in an otherwise pristine career marked by landmark films such as Trap Street and Angels Wear White, also starring Wen.
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Taiwanese actress shows her versatility as a soap star turned stuntwoman in a film marred by narrative confusion and a sudden tonal change


Taiwanese actress shows her versatility as a soap star turned stuntwoman in a film marred by narrative confusion and a sudden tonal change.


Chinese language cinema

Asian cinema

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Berlin International Film Festival

An assessment or critique of a service, product or creative endeavour.  Film reviews, restaurant reviews, reviews of art exhibitions. (Eg. Crazy Rich Asians: an important film, yes, but a good one?)


Review

Review | Berlin 2025: Girls on Wire movie review – Wen Qi stars in Vivian Qu’s uneven genre blender

Taiwanese actress shows her versatility as a soap star turned stuntwoman in a film marred by narrative confusion and a sudden tonal change