A still from the film Drifting Flowers
A still from the film Drifting Flowers

Drifting Flowers is a 2008 work by Taiwanese director Zero Chou. I imagine no one needs an introduction to Zero Chou — her 2007 film Spider Lilies, a fairly well-known queer-themed film, probably owed much of its fame to Rainie Yang and Isabella Leong. The scattered subplots of Spider Lilies offered almost no real pleasure, but this Drifting Flowers turns out to be a rare, genuinely good queer film.

The film is made up of three stories — “Meigou,” “Shuilian,” and “Zhugao”: eight-year-old Meigou doesn’t yet know what love is; Shuilian, her best years behind her, spends what’s left of her life searching for her late partner; and the teenage Zhugao gradually comes to understand her own love for women. A line from the film’s introduction on Douban captures its essence perfectly: When the time of youth has passed, what meaning is left to life, and what are we supposed to do?

Yes — these three women are not like the women of Women Who Flirt, suppressed by patriarchal society yet still chirpy and bright; nor are they the sexy, fashionable women of Sex and the City living it up in some big metropolis; still less are they the women of certain Taiwanese or Korean dramas, living carefree lives tangled up in complicated love affairs. They belong to a small group of women I find utterly adorable and love dearly — lesbians.

Like the recent First Love, this film too is about love, but a love that is neither heavy nor distant — the director paints, in the plainest of strokes, a truly authentic love that exists in this world. Watching Shuilian board the train to go searching for Ahai, I found myself in tears as well. If you still think love feels too remote and uncertain, maybe try the approach Drifting Flowers takes: just love freely, without restraint — youth won’t let you drift for long.