Opening in 1950s Taiwan, during the rule of the Kuomintang (the Chinese Nationalist Party), “Tigertail” introduces us to a young boy named Pin-Jui. He lives with his grandparents in the countryside while his mother looks for a job.

The film, streaming on Netflix, soon jumps to the present day: Pin-Jui, now an old man (Tzi Ma), lives in the United States and clearly has a fraught relationship with his grown-up daughter (Christine Ko); it’s not hard to discern that from the awkward silences. Spanning more than half a century, “Tigertail” goes back and forth in time, tracing the events that allowed Pin-Jui to achieve his American dream yet made him so aloof to his loved ones. It does this to mixed results.

The writer and director Alan Yang (co-creator of “Master of None”) was inspired by the story of his own father, who immigrated to the United States from Taiwan. Hong-Chi Lee portrays Pin-Jui as a young man, who finds work in a factory alongside his mother, just like Yang’s father had; they make just enough to scrape by.