The art of the thriller is the art of deception, the concealed trap, the hidden heart. In that way, it’s akin to art of fencing as outlined by three-time national champion Zihan (Tsao Yu-Ning) in Nelicia Low‘s taut, sophisticated debut: “Fencing is about hiding your true intentions from your opponent” he says. But Zihan’s own face as he speaks is an unreadably handsome mask. He is coaching his impressionable, sweet-natured younger brother Zijie (Liu Hsiu-Fu) in the ways of saber strategy, but he is also coaching him in deception, possibly even sociopathy.
Zihan has only just been released from juvenile prison, where he has been incarcerated for seven years following the death of his opponent at the tip of Zihan’s broken blade during a bout. Zihan insists it was an accident. Zijie longs to believe him. But their mother, Ai Ling (Ding Ning), a glamorous widow and nightclub singer, disagrees, convinced of her elder son’s malevolence. Perhaps that is to do with her interpretation of a near-fatal drowning incident from years before — partially shown to us in a fragmentary prologue. But it could also simply be evidence of her own, coolly un-maternal instinct to favor her younger, more docile son over her ungovernable older boy.
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Though she dotes on Zijie now, and together they present the very model of a healthy mother-son relationship, Ai Ling has buried the truth of Zihan’s crime like a dirty secret which she keeps from her kindly, wealthy beau Zhuang (Lin Tsu-Heng), accounting for Zihan’s absence by claiming, in very Taiwanese Tiger-Mom fashion, that he is abroad studying medicine at Johns Hopkins. So when Zihan, upon release, refuses to go quietly to live in the countryside as his mother has arranged, and instead comes back to Taipei and makes tentative contact with his little brother, Zijie is faced with a dilemma. If he rejects Zihan he is tacitly accepting that his mother’s subzero assessment of her firstborn is correct and his brother is a psycho, unworthy of fraternal affection. And if he goes against Ai Ling’s express wishes and decided to keep seeing Zihan, he is admitting that their mother is unnaturally delusional in her insistence of Zihan’s guilt, as well as threatening the precarious happiness she has found with Zhuang by bringing Zihan, the living, breathing, poker-faced embodiment of the huge, shameful lie she has been maintaining to her boyfriend, back into their orbit.
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Of course Zijie chooses to secretly keep on seeing his brother, especially once it’s clear that the more experienced young man’s fencing tips elevate Zijie’s game immeasurably; as a result of their clandestine coaching sessions Zijie is picked for the national championships. But there is also an emotional component to the brotherly reunion, with Zihan innately understanding and encouraging what their mother refuses to see — that Zijie is gay and has a sweetly bumbling crush on cute sparring partner Hui (Rosen). Still, Zihan’s training in matters of the heart as well as matter of the blade runs counter to Zijie’s natural instincts toward honesty. When he uses a flirtation strategem of Zihan’s — pretending to admire a thrash metal band he believes Hui likes — he quickly afterwards confesses to the ruse.
As with many thrillers, there are certain obvious narrative mechanics employed to produce the requisite suspense. But “Pierce” is clad in such elegant filmmaking that we mostly cannot see the gears grind — in particular Low’s unusual choice for DP in Polish cinematographer Mikhal Dymek (“EO,” “The Girl with the Needle”) proves inspired, with Dymek’s subtly enhanced, rich naturalism giving even garish, overlit spaces like gyms and supermarkets plenty of shadows and shallow-focus corners in which sinister presences can lurk. But most of the film’s real power is contained in the interactions between the two terrific young actors, in the nuances of their body language and their contrasting expressions; Liu’s doe-eyed gentleness and yearning defining Zijie, while Tsao’s chiselled features make Zihan almost foxlike with sharp instinctual cunning.
So it’s unfortunate that there are a couple of heavy-handed moments, with the adult boys turning into their childhood selves in certain scenes, and within a finale that is almost surreally sensationalized after the graceful thrust-and-parry dynamic of most of the film. The overblown ending paradoxically feels like a rare failure of nerve in a film more often notable fro its control, exemplified in a chilling restaurant scene during which Jihan’s easy, glittering charm successfully hoodwinks his soon-to-be-stepfather’s clan, until the little boy sitting next to Zijie whispers, “What’s wrong with him? Why is he so scary?” and bursts into tears. “Pierce” is at its best when it keeps us in a similar state of self-doubting tension, unable to guess our antagonist’s intentions, but glimpsing, in even his softest moments, a flash of steel.