A Girl Who's Afraid of Touching People
2019 · 5m
Directed by Liang-Hsin Huang
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A girl journeys to overcome her fear, traveling from the past to the present, from pain to relief, as peaceful images turn hostile.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise sounds like every other metaphorical coming-of-age animation until you actually watch the tonal flip—peaceful images turning hostile is a neat inversion, but it's almost *too* legible as a concept, which makes me wonder if Huang's doing something weirder underneath that I'm not quite buying yet.
Huang's working in a lineage of introspective animation that traces back through works like *Spiritaway*'s psychological landscapes, and the structural journey from past-to-present, pain-to-relief reads as formally considered—though whether the execution justifies that architecture is the question.
There's a single choice embedded here—that moment when the peaceful imagery inverts into something hostile—that feels like it could either be the whole film or nothing, depending on *how* Huang executes the transition; if it's a cut, a color shift, a sound design pivot, that one decision either makes this resonate or collapses it.
Reviews
Love the expressive ways Huang shifts through different moments in time here—specifically the way peaceful images become hostile ones. The visuals really sing thanks to the terrific music and sound work, outstanding work all around.