Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Our Times
2015 · Frankie Chen · Our Times on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Notice the film starts in the present before slipping into the past. (structure)
An adult Truly Lin, worn down by office life, opens the film before it dissolves into an extended flashback to her 1990s high school.
Payoff: You are told upfront this is a story being remembered, not simply lived, before it even begins.
Watch the classroom scenes glow in warm, high-key light. (light)
The remembered 1990s are shot soft and softly saturated, so the whole school world feels burnished rather than documented.
Payoff: The light itself tells you this past has been polished by twenty years of missing it.
Notice Truly's oversized glasses and permed hair early on. (setting)
Her dowdy styling marks her as the overlooked everygirl from her first scene, and every later change in her costume tracks a change in her confidence.
Payoff: You can read her whole arc off her wardrobe alone, without a line of dialogue.
Listen for the same melody returning across the film. (sound)
The theme song 'A Little Happiness' recurs throughout to underscore Truly and Tai-yu's relationship, tying the comic scenes to the bittersweet ones.
Payoff: One recurring melody is doing the work of reminding you this is all being looked back on.
Notice the 1990s props: cassette tapes, pagers, chain letters. (setting)
The film fills its high school world with specific analog objects, from Walkmans to idol posters, that date and texture every scene.
Payoff: These objects are what make the nostalgia feel earned instead of generic.
Once you have seen it
Track how long the film withholds who plays the grown Tai-yu. (structure)
The editing holds back who the adult Tai-yu is until the very end, engineering the return to the present as a surprise.
Payoff: The reveal is built entirely on casting a face the audience already recognizes.
Notice the editing slow down for the reunion scene. (cutting)
After a whole film of brisk, comic montage, the cutting stretches out for the sentimental turns and the final reunion.
Payoff: The change in rhythm alone tells you the film has stopped joking and started paying off its wish.
Watch how the plot exists to dismantle the school's social hierarchy. (setting)
The golden couple's polished perfection and the invisible majority Truly represents are set against each other from the start, and the ending resolves which one wins.
Payoff: The Cinderella ending is the payoff for a hierarchy the film has been quietly attacking all along.
Carry this in: Watch what changes in Truly's costume. Her whole story is told through what she's wearing.