3/5 stars
Girls on Wire is first and foremost a showcase of Wen Qi’s versatility.
In the film, which premiered at the 2025 Berlin International Film Festival on February 17, the Taiwanese actress originally known as Vicky Chen Wen-chi gets to emote as a maternal big sister, brood like an embittered avenger and go airborne and underwater as a swordswoman; she also switches between Sichuanese dialect and Mandarin with aplomb.
But what perks up Wen’s performance creates pitfalls for the film’s director, Vivian Qu.
Trading in tropes drawn from family melodramas, film noir and martial arts movies, Girls on Wire is inconsistent in tone and convoluted in its storytelling. Qu’s decision to unfurl the narrative using two intertwining timelines makes it more a blend of incoherent ideas than an inventive genre mash-up.
Filmed in Chongqing, southwest China, the film begins with Tiantian (Liu Haocun) locked in an underground cell, where she receives a heavy kicking and a forced injection of drugs at the hands of her captor. After a violent struggle, she accidentally slits the man’s throat before fleeing.