From the film synopsis: Youth, a period of life that is purposely wasted, but full-heartedly enjoyed. Following a young Portuguese girl's hair dye endeavour, the director remembers her own libertine youth. A dialogue beyond time, space and culture unfolds the truth of being young.
“She Dyes Her Hair Pink” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative
The short begins showing a (probably) European girl with pink hair and many piercings, smoking. At the same time, a narration in Chinese seems to speak both about the director and the girl, highlighting the fact that what she used to despise as a child (the smell of cigarettes, the color pink, piercings) are now part of herself, particularly regarding her appearance. The scene then changes to the girl getting a haircut, and the director remembering a traumatic experience during her first haircut. Various, similarly intense memories, involving sex and drugs are narrated after that, while we watch the girl going on with her daily life, including her job as a waitress.
Probably the most impressive scene of the film comes as she dyes her hair pink and then submerges into a bathtub filled with pink color, a sequence where Siddarth Govindam's cinematography finds its apogee.
The experimental approach Viv Li used, using the girl as the image and her narration as the sound works quite well, both due to the antithesis of a Caucasian image and an oriental voice, and due to the fact that the voice could actually be talking about the girl's experiences, and not the director's. This ambiguity is the main element of the narrative technically, while the narrative focuses on how people change, and how childhood shapes grown ups, occasionally in almost opposite ways than one would have anticipated, particularly regarding traumatic experiences.
Mafalda may not have any lines in the protagonist role, but her eyes speak volumes, while she also shows much courage appearing briefly half-nude. Her overall appearance, which lingers between the “regular” girl naturally, but more unusual one stylistically (with the pink hair and the piercings) works quite well for the movie, essentially anchoring the narrative.
Viv Li's approach is bold and unusual, but is quite intriguing, particularly through the sense of disorientation it emits, thus resulting in a very interesting short. Furthermore, the quality in the production shows that Li has the control of the medium, and it would be interesting to see her directing something longer than the eight minutes “She Dyes Her Hair Pink” lasts.
