Blind Massage

A massage parlour in Nanjing staffed by blind workers. All of them live there; the dormitory upstairs, the parlour below. Between them run relationships, jealousies and money. A woman newly arrived unsettles the balance and several people turn towards her at once. The subject is not blindness but how beauty is discussed in a place where it cannot be seen. Everyone in the parlour hears that the new woman is beautiful and none of them can see it; the film circulates that information like gossip and turns it into a value nobody can verify. The form carries the question of sight into the image itself. The camera sometimes stops focusing, the frame blurs and the sound comes forward: footsteps, a door, breathing. That choice won the cinematographer a prize at the Berlin festival in 2014. The casting is mixed. Lou Ye worked with professional actors in some roles and with genuinely blind performers in others, bringing the two together in the same scenes. The source is Bi Feiyu's novel of 2008. Guo Xiaodong, Qin Hao and Zhang Lei are in the cast. Who it is for: viewers who like Chinese independent cinema and formal experiment. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a clear narrative; the film moves among many characters and follows none of them to the end.