Flying on A Wire is Not Real Flying

Can one escape their own fate? 

Girls on Wire (Vivian Qu, 2025) is a grim tale about a family’s inevitable fate, weighed down by drug addiction and society. It reminds me of Robert Icke’s modern adaptation of Oedipus, which recently had a successful run at Wyndham’s Theatre in London. The central message is the same: no matter how good you are, or how hard you try, you’ll still be torn down by this society and its sins.

Under the cruel red lights, the opening scene already sets the tone. Tian Tian (Liu Haocun) kills a drug dealer in self-defence, then flees to find Fang Di (Wen Qi), the cousin she hasn’t seen in five years. They grew up together like sisters, but Fang Di moved away to become an actress while Tian Tian stayed at home to deal with her father’s addiction. 

The original Mandarin title means “Girls Who Want to Fly”. Tian Tian always likes crows as a child; she later gets a crow tattoo on her arm. She hopes her own child can fly away like Fang Di, far away from the debts and misery of this family. 

However, Fang Di’s life is not as glamorous as Tian Tian imagined. Working as a stuntwoman in a martial arts film, the director pushes her to the limits with no mercy, even after she passes out in the freezing water. If we forgot about the bleak reality of the film industry before, we remember it clearly now. But Fang Di is determined to do anything to pay her family’s debts. In fleeting moments, she does seem to fly and live in the way Tian Tian longs for. But the invisible wire fools the eye. Flying on a wire is not real flying. 

While the sky seems to be where the cousins long to be, water seems to always drag them down, much like Tian Tian’s drug-addicted father. We pray for magical realism like Bird (Andrea Arnold, 2024) to save the cousins, yet just like Angels Wear White (2017), Vivian Qu sticks to her gritty realism. Even childhood flashbacks are filled with shouts and cries, except one – Tian Tian is just born, and the whole family is bathed under soft yellow lights. The air is filled with a calm happiness; the home looks serene for the first time. Even Tian Tian’s father looks radiant. I wish time stopped there, and this film never happened.