Debut: Shattering the silence in ‘Hair Tie, Egg, Homework Books’
Luo Runxiao’s drama short film, Hair Tie, Egg, Homework Books (2021), showcases the power of silence through the character of model student Lin Yuqi (Junyan Miao). Eleven-year-old Lin is tasked with giving a speech about her loving family at the Parent’s Meeting that night. However, her peers and teacher are unaware that she witnesses domestic violence every day, perpetrated by her father. Wang Yilong (Yanglai Wang), Lin’s mischievous classmate who seems to get into trouble in every scene, shares the same secret as Lin.
The short opens with Lin walking down a school hallway, clutching a pile of homework as she heads to the teacher’s office. In the background, Wang is seen fighting with other students. The next scene is an abrupt flashback to Lin’s home, where her mother’s suicide attempt is violently thwarted by her father. Accustomed to the violence in her everyday life, Lin hits Wang after he takes her hair tie and taunts her with it. Wang is slow to recover, clearly affected by Lin’s actions. The silent exchange between the two children is profoundly sad, revealing to both the audience and Lin that Wang shares a similar experience at home. Later, at the Parent’s Meeting, the teacher (Siliang Shen) scolds Wang again as she reviews the disciplinary report, prompting Wang’s father to lash out at him. He calls Wang a “disgrace” and promises him “a beating tonight.” In an all too-fast sequence, Wang commits suicide by jumping out of the classroom window. Hair Tie, Egg, Homework Books poignantly captures the unspoken trauma of domestic violence and its tragic consequences on young lives.
Li Dongjun, the director of photography, made the symbolic choice to shoot the majority of the short film through windows or door frames. In the opening scene, Lin walks to the teacher’s office, but the camera films her from outside an open window instead of following her inside. Another example is when Lin comes home from school and finds her mother with a black eye, looking out of a broken window. Door frames are another repeated element. In the scene where Lin’s mother attempts suicide, the camera films the interaction from a distance, outside the room. When Lin hits Wang in the bathroom, the sequence is shot from outside, looking in. Similarly, when Lin and her mother put on makeup for her speech and to cover the black eye, the door frame borders the shot.
This stylistic choice creates a powerful symbolic statement using two contradictory themes: windows represent transparency, while doors represent privacy. By shooting in this style, Dongjun conveys the feeling of looking in from the outside. It drives home the message that even when the characters are not behind closed doors, there is still a sense of detachment and pain, albeit less obvious. The window symbolizes the space outside the home where they must still maintain the facade that everything is fine. Thus, when Wang commits suicide, he not only shatters this facade but also forces everyone to realize that things are not as they appear.
In an interview with the director, it was revealed that the story is inspired by his own experiences and Eastern Asian cinema’s choice of hiding these issues. However, Runxiao states in an interview:
For me it’s different, I like realness. Mine is an unflinching look at domestic violence, all shot in a real and direct way, it’s people dying, people getting hurt, people taking their lives to make a statement. I also wanted to show what violence really does: it silences people. When we are growing up, we have a black and white view of the world, but then you are trained to do things a certain way, and for some aspects that molding comes from violence and power, power that makes you silent, stopping you from expressing your feelings. Some victims don’t even come out, and we only have this glorification of the macho instead. — Runxiao Luo
Overall, the short gracefully portrays the realities of domestic violence. It takes talent and skill to convey such a powerful message with minimal dialogue and silent scenes—a testament to its exceptional storytelling and direction. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the short has received 30 nominations and won 5 awards since its release.
