Lost in the Stars

He Fei and his wife Li Muzi go abroad on holiday for their anniversary. One night she disappears. He goes to the police, searches, waits for days. Then his wife comes back. But the woman who returns is not his wife. The photographs, the marriage papers, the passport and the hotel records all show this woman; everyone knows her and nobody takes his claim seriously. A lawyer takes the case. As the narrative proceeds, who is lying changes places several times. Cui Rui and Liu Xiang direct. Zhu Yilong and Ni Ni take the leads. The source is an old French stage play; the same text has been adapted many times in different countries and a version was made in Soviet cinema as well. The film was a large commercial success in China and among the most watched productions of its year. What the narrative builds is the viewer's trust; the film gives information deliberately incomplete and breaks the previous assumption in every section. The courtroom sections are at the centre and the tension is built largely through testimony. Its visual choice is dense colour and night scenes, a manner that has spread in Chinese thrillers in recent years. Its limit is the last section; the explanations pile up and some of them rest on coincidence. Who it is for: viewers who like twisting thriller plots and Asian crime films. Who it is not for: the plot contains forced points, the characters are thinly written, and the ending explains too much.