No puedo vivir sin ti

It’s immediately obvious through the powerful black-and-white images of an industrial harbour landscape that Leon Dai did not want to make a common film. Yet the realistically told story is as sensitive and accessible as a melodrama. The story is about a father and his little daughter – or more about how that loving father loses his daughter. Is based on a true story that caused quite a stir on Taiwan.
Li Wu-Hsiung is a middle-aged man without a profession or education. He does odd jobs on the quayside and lives with his little daughter in illegal accommodations. The child’s mother left soon after her birth, but the father and daughter survive thanks to their close bond. You could even say they are happy together. It’s only when the girl reaches school age that being together gets tangled up in an unbending bureaucracy. Li cannot prove that he is the father and the child is taken away from him. In the end, he resorts to a drastic act in despair.
The power of the film is in the simple and powerful images and the extremely authentic realism, especially also in the acting. The title of the film, No puede vivir sin ti (‘I can’t live without you’), certainly lives up to the contents, but it remains a mystery why this Taiwanese film has a Spanish title. (GjZ)

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