White Ant

The debut feature film by Chu Hsien-Che, who made several documentaries, White Ant is a psychological drama that tells a story about sexual fetishism. Bai Yide is a young man living alone. He works at a bookstore and derives sexual pleasure by stealing and wearing women’s underwear. One day, he receives a DVD in which his activities have been recorded and he becomes anxious. The DVD was sent by Junhong, who happened to know about Bai’s psychological trauma steming from working at Bai’s mother’s wedding dress shop. The director shows deep interest in Bai’s anxiety and the emotional change in Junhong. Junhong sends the DVD as a message of warning but, ironically, it works as a way to harass the weak at the same time. This implies the dual face of power. We are all subject to power relations in our daily lives. White Ant, therefore, has both nature of a psychological drama and a social drama. —Busan International Film Festival