Self Scratch
2020 · 9m
Directed by Chenghua Yang
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Following a break-up, Wen sinks into melancholy. She can’t talk to anyone and therefore talks to herself a lot. By understanding that it is not the love she has lost but her confidence, she will be able to reconcile with herself and feel ready to love again.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Self-talk as salvation is almost a greeting card, but Yang refuses the expected catharsis—there's no triumphant moment here, just the quiet, unglamorous work of talking yourself back into existence, which is subversive precisely because it doesn't perform its own profundity.
Yang situates this squarely in the lineage of introspective East Asian cinema—Park Chan-wook's chamber intimacy, Wong Kar-wai's melancholic precision—with editing that respects the weight of silence and a formal restraint that lets the inner monologue carry the full emotional architecture.
The masterstroke is making the protagonist's voice-over *fragmented and uncertain* rather than omniscient—each sentence trails or contradicts the last, and that formal choice to let her self-dialogue stutter and fail is what makes the reconciliation feel earned rather than imposed.
Reviews
Eine hervorragende Visualisierung mentaler Gesundheit (oder vielmehr deren Absenz).