094. Edward Yang: That Day, On The Beach (featuring Natalie Ng)

We’re thrilled to be joined by Natalie Ng, a huge Edward Yang fan and friend of the podcast, to dive into Yang’s feature debut, That Day, On The Beach! Natalie, who works at the Asian Film Archive, tells us about AFA’s recent Edward Yang retrospective (complete with a physical exhibition) and shares her deep love for Yang’s work.

Together, we explore the film’s place in Yang’s filmography, its inventive narrative structure, and how it set the stage for his later masterpieces. Natalie highlights the agency of female characters in the film, while Ben argues that De-wei should have been hotter. Wilson leads us in discussing Christopher Doyle’s first feature work as a cinematographer and the stylistic choices of the film, and we very importantly discuss Sylvia Chang’s iconic perm, and whether girlbossing is an ideal ending for Yang’s female characters.

Links:

• Natalie’s Letterboxd review on That Day, On The Beach
• Follow Natalie on X (@schatzepages), Letterboxd (@wednesdaydreams), and read her writing on filmedinether.com.

That Day, On Our FREE patreon, discord server, and our socials @ www.deepcutpod.com

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(11:17) General Reactions

(25:18) Natalie’s personal reaction to the film

(29:47) Melodrama and female agency

(34:35) Edward Yang’s “Women without men” + Digression into other Yang films

(41:49) Ending of That Day

(45:47) Qing-qing and Jia-sen’s roles in the story

(50:52) Jia-li’s love interests

(54:40) Tone and filmic style

(01:02:55) Other films That Day relates to

(01:07:15) Babies

(01:10:32) The Perm and costumes

(01:15:04) Yang’s early fascination with women’s stories

(01:21:36) Wrap-up