HIFF Selects – OLD FOX

On the surface, the titular Old Fox looks like a kind and elderly dandy. Yet the ruthless landowner makes his living by manipulating others’ weaknesses to his own advantage. Seeing a bit of himself in one of his tenants, 11-year-old Liao, who is being raised by his gentle-to-a-fault single father, he starts to impart his streetwise wisdom to the boy, who is all too ready to learn. Director Hsiao Ya-Chuan masterfully intertwines the stories of various denizens of Liao’s neighborhood, often seen through the boy’s soon-to-be-not-so-innocent eyes, for a stark yet lyrical morality tale. Set in 1989, a time of rapid economic growth and political change in Taiwan, the award-winning film’s illustrious period recreation and poetic storytelling transforms this nostalgic microcosm of the era into a poignant parable of humanism and survival of the fittest.