Murmur of Youth

Murmur of Youth is a small coming-of-age film about loneliness and connection. I want to say there is room in my heart for more than one of such films. But the enthusiasm I can rustle up about Murmur of Youth is only enough to call it fine. It’s certainly no House of Hummingbird. But hey, most films aren’t.

The film focuses on the life of times of teenager, Mei-li Chen. Mei-li’s home life is neither ideal nor terrible. Her parents give her more chores to do and criticisms than they do affection. Her grandmother’s health has also taken a turn for the worse. At school, Mei-li has a crush on a boy who doesn’t notice the quiet Mei-li. Eventually, Mei-li’s emotions boil when the object of her affection finds a girlfriend. Dejected, Mei-li drops out of college and searches aimlessly for meaning and connection. She finds it working for a ticket booth at a small theatre. Her co-worker, also named Mei-li and her have much in common beyond their shared name.

I’m a bit confused about the ages of the characters. Mei-li² both look and very much act quite young. Though Mei-li in is college. I’ve got to assume this is not the Western use of college because the characters act too young for that to be the case. There’s also an ongoing thread about the second Mei-li, Mei-li Ling’s concern about her period starting. Very adolescent stuff. Assuming it is about girls who are maybe, 15, it works. The height of emotion over unfounded crushes and the blush of new friendship feel very true to an adolescent. If these characters are supposed to be adults, I retract this praise.

It really comes down to personal taste, but not enough happened in Murmur of Youth for me. If you like smaller, quieter stories, you might enjoy this more than I did. But even there, I have seen small, quiet films that have a sense of the profound. Murmur of Youth is rarely profound. Accurate to real life, perhaps. But no more than that. The film does manage to take a small, personal little story and mine some universal themes from it. But those universal themes are little more than young people are awkward and want affection and someone to understand them.

Still, I can’t pretend there isn’t something uplifting about these two, awkward and quiet girls finding each other. I’m overall critical of the film’s choice of using a heavy sense of realism for this story about quiet teen girls. Personal experience tells me that real life quiet teen girls don’t want realism, they want exaggerated fantasy. But by the end, there is at least enough of a triumph in Mei-li Chen and Ling’s relationship as to appeal to queer, awkward teen girls who want to sort of see themselves but better. There is a near desperation to their touch combined with a level of innocence of not actually knowing how to express this. The two girls grasping each other, almost desperately in a moment of deep connection feels triumphant and cathartic.

Murmur of Youth is another film that suffers from being part of the over-crowded coming of age genre. It doesn’t particularly stand out within said genre. Murmur of Youth is a perfectly adept film. But it’s a very small, quiet story that isn’t exactly going to stand out in my memory. House of Hummingbird remains the best iteration of a young girl’s loneliness and search for basic human connection I’ve seen. But, if there’s room in your heart for more than one such story, Murmur of Youth is there, waiting to be seen and understood.

Overall rating: 5.6/10

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