Film Review: A Foggy Tale 大濛 (2025) - Taiwan
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critics Circle of Australia)
I rated it 9/10
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ 1/2
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There are films that shout their importance, and then there are those like Chen Yu-hsun’s A Foggy Tale(大濛), which arrive on quiet feet, wrapped in mist, and leave you changed in ways you don’t immediately notice. This is one of the finest Taiwanese films in recent memory — a work of profound humanity set against one of the island’s darkest chapters.
The story unfolds in the 1950s, in the long shadow of the White Terror. We follow young Yue, a girl from rural Chiayi, on a perilous journey to Taipei after her brother’s execution. What could have been a straightforward tale of grief and vengeance instead becomes something far richer: a patient, observant portrait of ordinary lives persisting under suffocating uncertainty. Chen, whose previous works like My Missing Valentine showed a gift for blending whimsy with emotional truth, here strips things back to essentials. The “fog” of the title is both literal — those enveloping mists that cloak the landscapes — and metaphorical, describing a society where fear lingers like damp in the bones, where neighbors watch neighbors and survival demands both courage and compromise.
Visually, the film is a quiet triumph. Cinematography captures the textures of mid-century Taiwan with loving specificity: rain-slicked streets, modest homes filled with the weight of unspoken worry, and vast, hazy countrysides that swallow individuals whole. Chen’s direction never rushes; he trusts his audience to feel the passage of time, the small kindnesses that pierce the gray. Performances are uniformly excellent. Caitlin Fang as Yue carries the emotional center with a steely vulnerability that feels lived-in rather than performed. Supporting turns, including those by Tseng Jing-hua, Will Or, and 9m88, add layers of texture — faces that could belong to your own family, people caught between principle and pragmatism.
What elevates A Foggy Tale beyond mere historical drama is its refusal to preach. Chen is too wise for easy heroes or villains. Instead, he shows us the fog as something that touches everyone — the executed, the survivors, even those enforcing the terror. There is humor here, too, the earthy, resilient kind that surfaces in Taiwanese storytelling like wildflowers through concrete. In one sense, this is a film about reclaiming bodies and dignity; in another, it is about how memory itself can be an act of resistance.
In an era when many cinemas chase spectacle, Chen reminds us of cinema’s older, deeper power: to bear witness, to humanize the past, and to illuminate the present. A Foggy Tale swept major honors at the Golden Horse Awards for good reason. It is visually striking yet intimate, heartbreaking without despair, and ultimately hopeful in its clear-eyed gaze at human goodness.
This is essential viewing — not just for students of Taiwanese history or Asian cinema, but for anyone who believes films can help us see through the fog. Highly recommended. (Neo, 2026)