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HARD BOILED EGGS

By Yi MENG

SALON DE PAPRIKA - as PROD / FIN

Family - Post-Production 2024

Yu, a 10-year-old Chinese American girl, hates hard boiled eggs - partly because her mother enforces them as the mandatory breakfast. When she starts suspecting her mother’s infidelity, she rushes to investigate; yet a harsher reality awaits.

- Year of production
- 2024
- Genres
- Family, Female director, Drama
- Countries
- USA
- Languages
- ENGLISH-UNITED STATES, CHINESE
- Budget
- 0 - 0.3 M$
- Duration
- 13 mn
- Director(s)
- Yi MENG
- Writer(s)
- Yuky SHEN
- Cast
- Blair DUAN, Christine LIAO, Ke SHI, Meilani SATO
- Producer(s)
- Yimeng YUAN (Salon de Paprika), Yuky SHEN, Pablo ZAMORANO
- Synopsis
- Every morning, Yu wakes up to two hard boiled eggs for breakfast, prepared by her mother, Yong. Yu always obediently consumes the eggs despite her repugnance, before running downstairs and hopping into her father Tang’s car to go to school.
  
  One day, Yu returns upstairs to retrieve her forgotten lunch bag. She overhears Yong’s intimate phone call with someone Yong refers to as “cheeky egglet”. Suspicious of Yong having a potential affair, Yu decides to dig out the bad guy and stop him from destroying her family. She sneaks into Yong’s room, often off-limits to Yu, and finds a suspicious green lighter in Yong’s tote bag. Yong never smokes.
  
  The next morning, asserting that Tang’s sick, Yong leads Yu downstairs to the car while Tang watches from the kitchen window. On their way to school, Yu looks to her mom and sees a purple mark on Yong’s neck, like a hickey, which further confirms her suspicion. Yu daydreams about a repugnant kiss that the bad guy presses on her mother. Distracted at school, Yu absent-mindedly lets her friend test out a tarot card reading, but the result for “future” is a death card. Fearing the mysterious affair will bring everything to “death”, Yu decides to confront her mother.
  
  At dawn, Tang barges into the front door and drunkenly slaps Yong across her face over an argument about his alcoholism. Yu, hiding away in the bathroom, opens the door and finds Yong sobbing with bruises on her body. She finally realizes she should’ve blamed her abusive alcoholic father, Tang.
  
  At night, Yu takes out a rotten hard-boiled egg that she’s been hiding and executes her final revenge.