Long Day's Journey Into Night

A film set in Kaili in southern China. Luo returns to his home town for his father's funeral. He has not been there for years and the city has changed. He finds a clock. There is a photograph inside it and the woman's face has been burned away. He remembers her. He was with her years ago; her name was Wan Qiwen and one day she disappeared. He begins to look. From there the film is a story of remembering. Water in a mine, an abandoned house, a karaoke room, a cinema and a tunnel. Who said what and when is unclear. The narrative keeps confusing its times and which scene is real never becomes settled. Then the film moves to its second part. Luo goes into a cinema, sits down and puts on his glasses; the audience is asked to do the same. That part runs fifty-nine minutes and was shot in a single take. The camera walks through a town, rides a cable car, gets onto a motorcycle, and there is no cut anywhere. The section is in three dimensions. The first half is in two; the change is made in the middle of the film. What the narrative is interested in is not love but the shape of memory: the film builds remembering not as a story but as a space with no rules. Its release in China is a story of its own. The marketing presented it as an occasion for New Year's Eve; screenings were timed so that the kiss in the last scene would fall on the first second of the new year, and tickets sold in record numbers. Then the reaction came. Audiences leaving the cinema said they had not understood it, the ratings collapsed, and the box office fell away sharply after the first day. Tang Wei, Huang Jue, Sylvia Chang and Lee Hong-chi are in the cast. Bi Gan wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes slow cinema that works by dream logic, and technical daring. Who it is not for: anyone who wants to follow a story; the narrative deliberately does not resolve and the first half is scattered for many viewers.