‘No redemption’: Actress Shu Qi on her directorial debut Girl and her continued claustrophobia

SINGAPORE – The severe sense of tragedy that plagues Taiwanese actress Shu Qi’s directorial debut Girl (2025) has left audiences pining for a gentler resolution.

But the first-time film-maker, speaking to local media on Nov 27 while in town for the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF), resists idyllic answers. “There is no such thing. This is not a story of redemption. This is life.”

A day after the loosely autobiographical coming-of-age tale of a teenage girl and her mother’s difficult life mired in violence and poverty opened the 36th edition of the film festival, Shu Qi shed more light on her movie from a Marina Bay Sands hotel room.

In a roundtable interview, she reveals that an epilogue bringing the estranged mother and daughter together was only belatedly tacked on after her team protested that audiences must be allowed a little catharsis.

Her own life had no such clear reconciliation, and she continues to suffer from claustrophobia after spending so much of her childhood cowering in a closet from her alcoholic father.

“I’m still scared of staying on high floors or taking the lift, but life must go on,” the 49-year-old director says. “I know that nothing will happen, but you cannot conceal the scars in your heart.”

She adds: “Maybe in my old age, I can look back on this and laugh at it all, like ‘Why was I so afraid?’”

She has already got better. Despite preferring to keep her room’s sliding door open so she does not feel hemmed in, she stands up mid-way through the interview to shut it after realising the ambient noise was becoming distracting.

Actors’ trauma

Girl, which has already earned Shu Qi best director awards at the Busan International Film Festival and the Polish International Film Festival of Cinema and Cinematography, stars 18-year-old Taiwanese Bai Xiao-ying as Shu’s stand-in Hsiao-lee and Taiwanese singer-actress Joanne Tang, better known as 9m88, as the teenager’s mother Ajuan.

It is powered by potent performances from the duo, especially 9m88 as a young girl who is mother to a younger girl in late-1980s Taiwan, unable to stop herself from lashing out because she has never been taught to love.

Both were cast after a prolonged search. Shu Qi found Bai after scouring endless clips of child actresses across Taiwan, settling on her because of her deep-set eyebags.

Meanwhile, 9m88’s eyes were the opposite, sparkling with passion and fire. Shu Qi was interested in how she could be broken down by the relentless plight of her character.

The 35-year-old singer-actress says filming the scenes rampant with abuse took a toll. Her body would not stop shuddering during a rape scene and there were times when she was left a wreck in the make-up room after shooting wrapped.

She adds: “At first, I thought I wouldn’t be too affected because I’m playing a character, but the body reacts. I needed a change of mindset because this abuse was probably routine for the mother.”

Shu Qi says there was only so much she could do to protect her cast, joking: “I could only tell her to go home and watch more Stephen Chow films.”

She was referring to the Hong Kong actor-director known for his comedic shows, who directed her in Journey To The West: Conquering The Demons (2013) and was her co-star in The Lucky Guy (1998).

Shu Qi did limit scenes of physical abuse to just a few takes, and made sure Bai and 9m88 felt comfortable. “I have to also make sure they are immersed in the character, so if they can’t come out of it immediately, I’m also quite happy. Is that too cruel to say?”

Millennium Mambo

Eagle-eyed fans of Shu Qi will spot an uncanny echo with the film that made her name, Millennium Mambo (2001), in the guise of Keelung’s Zhongshan Bridge.

While it was then the runway for the iconic slow-mo strut of Shu Qi’s character, in Girl, it is stripped of all empowering qualities, a transitory path Hsiao-lee crosses as part of her miserable existence.

The choice of the bridge was a spontaneous one Shu Qi and the crew landed on while scouting for locations congenial to 1980s Taiwan – “an arduous process”.

It gave her goosebumps when they first settled upon it. The 130m-long footbridge is now fitted with wire mesh and gave her the inspiration for the metal cage metaphor that would follow Hsiao-lee home.

Shu Qi is keen to bring up Millennium Mambo director and frequent collaborator Hou Hsiao-hsien’s formative influence. She paid heed to the 78-year-old Taiwanese writer-director’s advice to “make sure the camera follows the characters, rather than have the actors perform to the lens”.

Asked if her follow-up would be a romance, Shu Qi – who is married to Hong Kong actor-director Stephen Fung, 51 – invokes Hou again, who inculcated in her that one should make films that improve society.

And so her next project will likely be a contemporary one that persists on the themes of familial relations and the plight of women. “Romance has not much to do with me as an artist, I’ll leave that to the young,” she says, gesturing at 9m88 and Bai.

The stunning star claims she can no longer star in romance films – “too old”. There is just a tinge of wistfulness, but mostly this is matter-of-factly embraced.

On watching Girl for the first time at the Venice International Film Festival held from August to September, Shu Qi says she made sure to keep a lid on her emotions – “not because the film is doing anything, but because you are seeing your creation fully realised”.

Then, on such a large screen, the perfectionist in her could not help but start detecting flaws in the cinematography.

“I could not relax. Only when at the end I saw that people were touched, I allowed myself to begin to feel, quietly.”

This story of generational trauma has already driven some of the audience to action. Shu Qi says some of her friends, after watching Girl, braved returning home to have a good meal with their parents.

This, like real life, is a complicated reckoning. “I won’t say they have forgiven, but they can begin to understand how hard it was for those growing up in that generation.”