Transactions

In a sewing workshop, the making of a piece of clothing is filmed in detail while we listen to a phone conversation between a Taiwanese mother and her daughter, the director of this film. The mother spends her days and nights toiling away so she can afford to send her daughter to school in the United States. They are discussing the credit card bill. Not only their physical distance, but especially their emotional one manifests itself in an increasingly emphatic way. Their worlds are light-years away from one another, which leads to miscommunication and lack of understanding. A talk between two people who love each other is reduced to a business transaction; after all, the language of the dollar is universal. Transactions is about the boundaries of a love that supposedly knows no bounds.