Dear Ex is an award-winning Taiwanese movie directed by Mag Hsu and Hsu Chih-yen. Winning all four categories it was nominated for at the 20th Taipei Film Awards (Taiwanese specific), and winning three of the 6 nominations for the 55th Golden Horse Awards (Chinese Language specific), this was likely to be an interesting film.
The film starts off with a boy whose mother has found out that her late husband had left his insurance payout to a stranger; a male lover. The mother (Lui San Lian, portrayed by Hsieh Ying-hsuan) bring her son (Song Zheng Yuan, portrayed by Chen Ru-shan) to the house of the stranger (Ah Jie, portrayed by Roy Chiu) to try and guilt him into giving the money back, unknowingly providing the son the ability to find out himself who was truly the "bad guy" in this scenario.
The film follows young Song Zheng Yuan, as he battles against his controlling mother--who he sees as money-hungry--and against the "manstress"--who seems apathetic of the whole matter. Being the stubborn youth trapped in emotional turmoil, every action seems to have a negative consequence, but it builds the development of this trio of characters organically. The film is so genuine in its relationships that it is almost irritating and frustrating to begin with, with all characters being overly emotional (or overly unemotional, as the case may be). It all feels over-the-top, yet as the story progresses and you see the history of the characters unfolding, their behaviour becomes more and more understandable and relatable.
The film mixes a few light-hearted moments with some heavy topics, and a youthful narrative from time to time, to give it a feeling not dissimilar to Jason Reitman's 2007 film, Juno. As the film is not in English, however, subtitles are necessary and are quite fast-paced with the speed at which these emotional characters speak. When there are multiple dialogue sources, and no way to know who is saying what, the subtitles can be a little confusing from time to time. An infrequent issue though.
The film's pacing is a little slow at times, but the measured rate at which the flashbacks are drip-fed to the audience keeps the intrigue as we try to determine in what direction the film will go.
Overall, Dear Ex is far more along the drama lines than comedy, but it provides an interesting look at a split family from a different cultural perspective; made even more poignant considering voters in Taiwan have recently rejected same-sex marriage in a referendum.