‘Raydio’: Jeonju Review

Dir/scr: Zhan Kaidi. Taiwan. 2021. 93 mins.

The title of this subdued drama is an amalgamation of the names of the two main characters, father Ray (Lin Ju) and his son Dio (Huan Shao-Yang). But this title is a rare instance of the two coexisting without a space between them. In their shared apartment in the Taiwanese port city of Kaohsiung, Ray and Dio orbit each other with barely any interaction. With the rest of the world struggling to get to grips with the restrictions of the pandemic – the film is set in early 2020 – social distancing is the natural state for Ray and his son. The reasons for this estrangement gradually become clear, although the reticence of the storytelling means that overt explanations are avoided and the film requires patience from the audience, plus a high tolerance for shots of Ray and Dio studiously ignoring each other in various locations.

The film emphasises emptiness

This is the first feature from writer and director Zhan Kaidi, following an award-winning short, The Pool Man. It receives its international premiere at Jeonju, having screened last year at the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. Further festival slots are a possibility, particularly in events with a focus on Southeast Asian cinema. Theatrically, it will likely connect best with domestic audiences.

In their sprawling home city in the south of Taiwan, Ray and Dio seem to be constantly on the move: Dio on his sputtering moped; Ray in the convertible Mercedes which,  saddled with gambling debts and struggling with alcoholism, he has no business owning; both of them on the ferries which chug between their home and their places of work. But despite this sense of perpetual motion, neither man seems to get anywhere. Both are marooned in dead end jobs – Dio rejects his deadbeat buddy’s lucrative offer of criminal activities in favour of a low-level gig in a cinema which seems to mainly consist of loitering vacantly next to the popcorn machine. Ray works nights as a security guard in a department store. The film emphasises emptiness. Ray’s place of work is deserted in the small hours; Dio’s has been thinned out by the pandemic. The hollow spaces of the backdrop echo the vacancies in the lives of both, evoking a sense of needs unfulfilled.

Dio, gauche and inarticulate, longs to connect with the new girl at work but contents himself with stalking her. And Ray clings to the ex-wife who is moving on and away – she is soon leaving for China – more for financial than emotional reasons. Ray and Dio are mirror images of each other, but it takes a scathing commentary from Dio’s grandmother and a striking moment during the ritual Tomb Sweeping Day for the son to realise that he is in danger of becoming his father.

The understated storytelling is echoed by the score, which starts with a scattering of abrasive free-form jazz before settling into a sullen drone, which sounds as though it was harnessed from the industrial hum of the city backdrop.