10/22
A Chinese woman lives for herself in silence, celebrating the prosperous Belle Époque with song and dance. The female lead does not have a single line of dialogue throughout the film. A meditation on love and the passing of time; a woman searches for her lost lover in the rubble of a deconstructed city as well as her own shattered memory, the Three Gorges Dam consumes entire cities, just as time swallows people, women sing and dance in joy and pain, and dreams come to the surface and submerge again. Lives are changing and often we don’t notice. Using mostly additional footage and outtakes from previous films, Zhang-ke weaves a cerebral and imaginative story. While I wish the material was all new and crafted with a more coherent story in mind, I can’t deny that Zhang-ke has a magical and mesmerizing touch in everything he does, even in his wanderings. Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival.