Mongrel review – Zen-like tale of compassion and suffering

Cannes film festival
Close attention is required for this sombre but impressive Taiwanese feature debut about exploited illegal staff, and their patients and gangmasters

Taiwan-based Wei Liang Chiang and You Qiao Yin have made this feature directing debut in the Directors’ Fortnight selection at Cannes. It evokes an almost Zen state of suffering and sadness – a feeling that penetrates the film’s fabric like months of steady rain in a rural landscape.

If that sounds like a daunting prospect, it is, and this movie requires patience and attention, a calibration of your viewing expectations to match its stasis. Yet it’s an andante tempo that makes its moments of drama, and even sensation all the more striking. The film’s executive producer is Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien: his influences are there, and there is also something of the work of Tsai Ming-liang.