Photo: Courtesy of Magnify
Pierce
This darkly assured, deeply unsettling debut from Singaporean filmmaker Nelicia Low heralds an exciting new filmmaking voice. Fresh from its invitation to the prestigious Karlovy Vary competition, this taut Mandarin-language thriller centers on Zi-Jie (rising star Liu Hsiu-Fu), a prodigious Taiwanese teen fencer whose life is upended when his older brother (a mesmerizing Tsao Yu-Ning, best known for his role in “Kano” in 2014) returns from a seven-year stint in juvenile prison for killing an opponent on the fencing strip. Convinced of his sibling's innocence against his mother's (Ding Ning, who won a Golden Horse Award for her supporting role in “Cities of Last Things,” is here coiled intensity personified) vehement protests, the naive Zi-Jie soon finds himself ensnared in his brother's charismatic but dangerous orbit. What at first seems a conventional redemption tale gradually curdles into something far darker and more disquieting as Low meticulously chips away at Zi-Jie's romanticized notions, the fencing scenes slicing through the tension with visceral, athletic grace. A probing look at family trauma and youthful delusion, "Pierce" cuts straight to the heart.