hard for me to rate this objectively because i’m generally quite strongly opposed to assisted dying (for all the obvious reasons) and so felt uneasy with the moral argument of the film. that said i appreciated its careful, elegant rendering of how it feels to fumble towards intimacy in a very emotionally charged and difficult situation. there’s something about the slightly uncanny quality of almodóvar’s heightened, soap opera melodrama stylings that really lends itself to the utter strangeness and incoherence…

i think it's maybe worth saying that this film had me on the verge of tears within the first few scenes and at some point in the last half hour i was basically weeping. i'm weak to any kind of sentimental family drama, and when it's about a chinese immigrant family struggling and striving, and when the child of that family is a depressed twentysomething unable to find her place in the world... i think i would have to be…