A middle-aged woman, A-Mian (Chuan Wang) whose husband and daughter (Yuu Chen) are always away from home, has been living alone for years. After finding out about her husband's affair, she starts to search for a new focus in life and visits the ping-pong club of her old school friend Lu Su-jen (Ying-Xuan Hsieh). An unlucky accident changes A-Mian body dramatically. She might find a way to make her daughter stay with her forever. This time she is determined to find perpetual happiness.
Mama Pingpong Social Club is screening at Taiwan Film Festival
Overall, “Mama Pingpong Social Club” is a rather curious if enjoyable enough short. This is due to the rather odd structure where the first half is presented in an unusual manner. With a focus primarily on A-Mian's dull and dreary life living by herself, since her husband and daughter have left her alone, this comes off with a decidedly obvious focus on how predictable her routine has become. Doing the same errands and meeting the same people over and over again has clearly left her in a rut at this stage of her life. The presentation of this lifestyle against what we see with Su-jen and her friends at the ping-pong club creates a very appealing counterbalance to the drudgery of her everyday existence. All of this is generally well-handled and gets the viewer into the events of what's going on quite well.
Once she gets engrained into the club and learns their deadly secret, though, the short tends to become less focused. Relying on traditional genre themes and imagery regarding who the participants actually are, nothing overtly special is done with this information. These tropes, which are commonly utilized in just about most efforts in the genre, instead add more poignancy to the whole affair rather than delve into the more bloodthirsty carnage that would be expected in such a setup. While there's a special degree of humanity in how it all plays together at the end, this one is slightly underwhelming due to this point but is still quite fun for the most part.
Far more emotionally impactful than expected, that “Mama Pingpong Social Club” falls just shy of the genre qualities most would've expected is a disappointing factor but thankfully not too much. While hardcore genre fans might be slightly put-off here, there's quite a lot to like that makes this a fun time.
