The Gift Short Film Review

alexjames96
Jun 3
2 min read

★★★★

The Gift explores the relationship between a mother and her autistic daughter, Yan Yan. Life is hard for them both but in very different ways. Yan Yan struggles to communicate which creates a lot of barriers and her mother is struggling to balance her work life and care for her daughter and her needs. Yan Yan’s mother is under a lot of pressure to be able to provide for her daughter and give her a good life, however, there appears to be a lot of resentment and anger for the situation she is in, and a lot of this anger is taken out on daughter Yan Yan. This is a very hard hitting and real drama that reflects the struggles of being a single mother and highlights the perspective of Yan Yan and the challenges she faces on sharing her emotions with her mother.

Yan Yan has the mindset of a young child, and her way of communicating is through her pictures and drawings, however, her mother chooses to ignore and disregard her feelings and fails to understand her true needs which is to spend more quality time with her mother. This leads to a lot of conflict within the family home leading to her mother sharing some cruel and hurtful comments about her daughter. It was great to see a very open interpretation of family life, the not so picture-perfect dynamics of relationships between mother and daughter. Instead, we are met with a down to earth, realistic portrayal of everyday home struggles and an understanding that not every family is going to be able to navigate through stressful situations successfully. I really thought that both characters were convincing and wore their hearts on their sleeves for the role, allowing the audience to relate and connect with that subject of miscommunication between family members.

The music playing over the scenes did create a dramatic effect, however, at times it seemed almost too theatrical and serious, a toned-down version of this would have fit the scenes slightly better. The locations used were great and made the story very real especially the family home, it aided the storyline nicely. I think what was fantastic about this story was the ending, the audience could see growth from the mother as she begins to learn about her daughter’s true feelings by looking at her pictures. She finally learns that her daughter longs for that connection between the two and the simple pleasures in life are what truly make her happy. From then on, both characters became closer and could finally connect with one another.

A heartwarming story that focuses on struggles but also learning from your mistakes and building on this. Not every family is perfect, and there will always be conflict and communication problems, The Gift shows the audience how to grow from this and learn from faults.