Wu Nien-jen, the screenwriter of Hou Hsiao-hsien's A City of Sadness and The Puppetmaster, makes his directorial debut with a personal reminiscence of his father that owes much to Hou's visual legacy. Wu looks with candor and wonder at the changes unfolding around his young narrator, Wu-Jian, in postwar Taiwan. His father, Sega, a coal miner who grew up when Japan ruled the island with a double-edged benevolence, feels closer to Japanese culture than to that of the mainland Chinese who took over in 1945. Personal events mirror larger contradictions between competing versions of history, but what ultimately resonates in this layered film are small, human gestures and memories, complicated emotions unfolding in single uninterrupted takes.-Lawrence Chua