Pierce

A young fencer navigates feints, parries and attacks in both his hobby and everyday life, in Nelicia Low’s sports thriller.

“Even though now I know what he really is like, I still … I still don’t know how to stop caring about him, or loving him. Aren’t I stupid?”

Zijie (Liu Hsiu-fu) is a young man in Taiwan who likes to fence. He learns that his brother Zihan (Tsao Yu-ning) is being released from prison after killing somebody during a fencing competition. Zihan insists it was an accident, but their mother Ai Ling (Ding Ning) believes strongly her son is anything but innocent. While she forbids her youngest son from seeing him, Zihan shows up to Zijie’s practises and gives him advice. They begin to bond, but the question of Zihan’s innocence lingers heavily in the air.

Like its weapons of choice, Pierce is a remarkably slim and straight-edged movie. It dabbles in multiple genres – romantic drama, sports, thriller, and mystery – but keeps its themes and story beats pared down to the bare minimum. We know just enough information about everyone to keep things moving, and the story engaging, and while some films bloat their runtime with unnecessary details, Pierce runs the risk of going the other direction.

There isn’t a lot of backstory given, with the only real incident in Zijie’s past is this one time when Zihan rescued him from drowning. Again, their mother tries to tell him Zihan would have simply abandoned him, giving us a bit more context into the story and the lives of these kids, but I would have enjoyed a bit more. There’s a lot of space to play with here and we could have seen more of what the brothers’ relationship was like before the murder/manslaughter.

That would have served the film’s best asset: the chemistry between the two brothers. Zijie is just naïve enough, with just enough of his wits about him that you can’t quite ever buy that he’s being played. Zihan is quite a sympathetic character, and Tsao Yu-ning plays him with a sad charm that makes you want to believe he’s innocent. He pleads his case often, and convincingly, only furthering the disconnect between what we want to believe and what could be the truth.

This grey area, emphasised strongly through the back-and-forth nature of fencing, is where director Nelicia Low shines. She keeps the audience guessing right until the final moments, giving this otherwise very low-key thriller the tension it needs to go through to the end. There’s only one scene that undercuts it: the completely hatstand moment when the family is at the stepdad-to-be’s family’s house, and a little kid stares at Zihan and loses his shit, because Zihan is inherently scary. It’s a weird moment of bad horror writing that comes out of nowhere and doesn’t do all that much.

Now, it would be remiss of me to talk about this film – which is currently screening as part o the Queer East film festival – without talking about the queer content in it. Pierce is in its delivery of queer content, also very subtle. In a way this is quite a refreshing take: to see the character’s developing romantic feelings for his fellow fencer played as quietly as another romance in any other sports drama. It doesn’t feel like an earth-shattering revelation, and is played very unremarkably – possibly signposting a shift into more casual gay relationships in Asian cinema.

Ultimately, Pierce isn’t your typical psychological thriller, nor is it your typical sports drama or even queer romance. It ties all these plots together and wraps in a filter of quiet unease, held together by a strong core theme of brotherly love, trust, and betrayal.

Verdict: With good suspense and character work, Pierce is sometimes a bit light in content, but often strikes true.

Pierce screens as part of Queer East

Overall entertainment: 7/10
Violence: 5/10 –Honestly all an accident
Sex: 0/10
Cringe: the proposal alone was top tier stuff. Just be normal, Uncle, damn
Just tell me when it gets gay for crying out loud!: About 35 minutes in
Carrefoure: That have them in Taiwan? Huh

Pierce (2024)
Also known as: 刺心切骨 (Heart piercing and bone cutting)
Mandarin

Director: Nelicia Low
Writer: Nelicia Low

CAST

Liu Hsiu-fu – Zijie
Tsao Yu-ning – Zihan
Ding Ning – Ai Ling
Lin Tsu-heng – Zhuang
Rosen Tsai – Jing Hui