In recent years, the representation of members of the LGBTQ community in East Asian cinema, or at least some parts of it, has become much more complex, realistic, and understanding. The same, sadly, cannot be said about intersex people. They are still either not represented at all and if they are, they are often subjects to Othering or vilification. Lily Ni's directorial debut “Born to be Human”, which premiered at the Osaka Asian Film Festival 2021, aims at making a small, yet bold, step towards changing that.
Shi-Nan (Lily Lee) is a typical 14-year-old boy from countryside Taiwan. He loves playing computer games, reading naughty magazines, and hates studying. One day, he starts feeling strange and peeing blood. Though initially thinking it is a result of an infection brought by the fact he's uncircumcised, his parents later learn that their son is a rare case of disorder of sex development, otherwise known as intersex, who has managed to keep reproductive organs of both genders until his teenage years. Faced with no choice, Shi-Nan's parents agree to a gender reassignment surgery for their son without his knowledge. After the operation, Shi-Nan wakes up as Shi-Lan (portrayed again by Lily Lee) and has to get used to an identity that has been decided for her by others.
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Lily Lee touches upon many pressing issues in contemporary society in her first feature. Apart from the main theme of experience of intersex people, there is also bullying, depression, even the idea of patients being used by their doctors for fame is touched upon. This oversaturation of themes, each of which deserves a separate film to be properly dealt with, results in them being used more as a “spicing” to the main topic which adds nothing worthy to our understanding of the problem in question. Take the topic of depression, for example. It is mentioned very briefly towards the end and speaks of this undoubtedly debilitating disease as posing a danger not to the person who suffers from it but to society as a whole. This rather questionable statement is further problematized by the fact that the depression is used as an important point for the development of the story. In the end, it feels like it is being used by the director in order to manipulate us.
Portraying both Shi-Nan and Shi-Lan and especially the former's transformation into the latter isn't an easy task but Lily Lee does a commendable job at it. Extremely slouched and awkward at the beginning, she grows more feminine and comfortable in her skin, as shown through her erect posture and less pained expression. This metamorphosis, though, is not complete, leaving Shi-Nan in a state of liminality between either genders, in the end belonging to neither and just trying to be a human being, as the title suggests.
The feeling of uncertainty that Lily Ni imbues in her debut feature is amplified by the film's sound design. Almost imperceptible high-pitched sine waves and screeches fill the auditory space in most scenes with the doctor who does her sex reassignment surgery, making us wonder if he is a crazy megalomaniac villain or a just a doctor who's vilified by the young girl. This sense of unsureness is further strengthened by the camerawork which frames him, as well as some of the other characters who are hostile towards Shi-Lan, in ways that make him look ugly and dangerous. Conversely, her crush Tian-Qi (Ruxuan Liang) is shown in the opposite light – as a celestial beauty that radiates goodness and empathy.
All of this implies to the viewer that he is seeing the world through the young protagonist's eyes, both helping him identify more with Shi-Nan's suffering and as a result, empathize with her. In the end, though, this feels slightly manipulative, as it seems to promise the viewer that it will show him a truly complex and nuanced portrayal of the experience and inner world of intersex people, but instead ends up strengthening many of the traditional ideas about gender and experience.
