An Unfinished Film

 

Director Lou Ye

AN UNFINISHED FILM                 B-                                                                                 China  Singapore  Germany  USA  (107 mi)  2024  d: Lou Ye

A film crew was harshly gobsmacked
When the deadly Wuhan virus attacked
Forced to their rooms
And reliant on Zooms
They sat until they collectively cracked

—An Unfinished Film (一部未完成的电影) - The Steel Frog Blog

Returning to the scene of the crime, the outbreak of the Covid pandemic in China at the beginning of 2020, with masks and social distancing becoming a regular part of our daily life, yet told through an unusual angle, blurring the boundaries between fiction and documentary, as Lou Ye, one of the most uncompromising Sixth Generation voices of China’s film industry, a filmmaker known for his bold and often controversial approach, has made what can be described as a cellphone film, as it normalizes the use of cellphones, a reminder that social media surrounds us everywhere, which some find as commonplace as any other daily ritual, yet a major distraction for others, who aren’t yet ready to call vertical-screen cellphone videos an artform, but this film builds its case.  Initially shown out of competition at the Special Screenings section at Cannes, this is essentially a behind-the-scenes, documentary style glimpse of filmmaking, a movie about making a movie, which extends to the multitude of largely unseen personnel who collaborate in the creative process, as we watch them work collectively, led by director Xiaorui (Mao Xiaorui, an actual television director), trying to reconstruct a film out of the remnants of a project that started 10 years ago but abruptly stopped for lack of financing, using outtakes or unused footage from what appears to be a sequel to Lou’s own gay-themed film SPRING FEVER (2009), among the first Chinese Mainland films to graphically depict gay sex, which won the Best Screenplay award at Cannes in 2009, but did not endear himself to Chinese authorities, released as a French/Hong Kong production to circumvent his imposed 5-year ban from filmmaking after SUMMER PALACE (2006), which was set against the background of the Tiananmen Square massacre.  Breaking out all the old outdated computer equipment that has been in storage, they rediscover the original files, while Xiaorui has also secured the participation of the same lead actor Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao), who is now an in-demand star, though when he rejoins the cast he explicitly states, “Your film will never pass censorship.”  Nonetheless, defying authorities, he’s eager to work with the director again, though they are all significantly older, carrying with them new life experiences, as some have gotten married and have families, including Jiang whose wife has an expectant baby on the way.  Filming begins in Wuhan only after the baby is born, becoming a poetic ode to the courage and tenacity of independent artists who are willing to buck the government censors, risking their careers and even reputations for so little, as there was no guarantee anyone other than the participants themselves would ever see this film, with Jiang heard uttering at one point, “If nobody can see this film in theaters, then what’s the point?”  Yet they choose to do it anyway.  Written by the director in collaboration with his wife and longtime co-writer Ma Yingli, this project gives them the opportunity to look back at the past, as the director and crew are constantly examining what they filmed a decade ago, which becomes a catalyst for their own introspection, constantly challenging viewers to question what is real and what is staged. It’s never clear what role Jiang has in this production, yet all communication starts from him, where part of the persistent rhythm is devoted to video chats between Jiang and his wife Sang Qi (Qi Xi), where the actress was really at home in Beijing taking care of her one month old baby, so this reality was built into the film, as she is only seen on a cellphone screen, often shown on a split screen to show both of them speaking quietly to each other, in one tender moment even falling asleep together, each holding their cellphones next to their faces.  A commentary on the film process itself, with the actors playing a film version of themselves, what we see is not just a film about interruption, but a film that interrupts itself, as its incompleteness is the central thesis that speaks volumes through time gaps and silences.  

Originally conceived as a film consisting of old footage of Jiang playing various roles, reflecting the changes in China over the past decade or so, but yet another unforeseen circumstance happens while they are shooting in the town of Wuhan, as they’re also grappling with this huge, unprecedented global pandemic unfolding all around them, taking us back to the very earliest stages of the Covid pandemic when it was just beginning, shifting the entire perspective of the film, becoming an hour-by-hour update on the changing focus of containing the outbreak, which suddenly becomes part of what they’re filming.  Despite television news reports of blocked roads alongside a very public military presence, at first no one paid it any mind when a hairdresser from Wuhan is sent home, or a production assistant faints in the corridor, thinking those affected were simply random illnesses, as the production would still move forward, AN UNFINISHED FILM Clip | TIFF 2024 YouTube (1:53).  What they envisioned in making this film never comes to fruition, instead they are continually interrupted with public health updates, which is mirrored by security enforcing a contamination zone, not letting anyone in or out of the hotel, which literally happens overnight and is completely inconceivable for some, who just assumed they would be home by the Lunar New Year to celebrate with their families, as travel plans had already been arranged.  But that comes to an abrupt halt when they are forcibly locked inside their rooms, while people in full-body hamzat suits bring their food or other essentials to their door, yet none of this eruptive chaos ever feels like it is staged, but remains viscerally raw, as cinematographer Zeng Jian’s handheld shots move between observation and confusion, mimicking the anxiety and disorientation people must have felt in the early days of the pandemic, where the emotional power lies in restraint.  The euphoric mood of the opening, hoping to create something entirely new, quickly turns into panic mode, initially met with anger and indignation, forcibly trying to make their way through security, followed by resignation and despair, with the realization that they would be stuck there for quite a while under quarantine, literally cut off from their families and the rest of the world, yet unlike those who voluntarily chose to stay at home and shelter-in-place, these individuals were really forced to lock down, where the entire crew must remain inside their respective hotel rooms, unable to leave until this is over, separated by circumstance and/or arbitrary health rules enforced by the military.  Blending actual footage of those early lockdown days with staged scenes, not everyone viewing this film wants to re-live these experiences again, as it may be too soon, still traumatized by what happened, with astronomical death rates that had never happened before during our lifetimes, yet at the very beginning, no one knew that it would lead to a worldwide pandemic, thinking only about its effect in the immediate vicinity, as the majority of the first reported cases of coronavirus are in China.  What happens at the hotel is a mini-version of what’s happening in the entire city, as the whole population of 14 million people are under a lockdown enforced by authorities, leaving the streets eerily empty, like a post-apocalyptic view of how the world might look after a nuclear war, so in essence the film is a time capsule of a historic period in our lives, and while the film was censored in China, completed only with financing from Singapore and Germany, it has been embraced around the world, largely for its critical thinking.  What this film thoughtfully captures is the fear, the isolation, and that longing for connection, things we can all universally relate to and understand, while also questioning the role of art during times of crisis. 

A film about creative inspiration quickly becomes a Covid documentary, a reflection of the chaos and confusion of the times, and a social and political crisis that played out differently in different places around the world, with cellphones documenting what the cast sees in the hallways, courtyards, or out their windows, where a constant stream of ambulances are seen arriving and departing, with disinfectant being sprayed everywhere, completely changing the fluid pace and hopeful outlook of the beginning, which is reduced to a crawl when the entire crew is left alone in their hotel rooms under lockdown.  With phones and televisions becoming their only window into the outside world, viewers are suddenly privy to personal messaging back and forth, sharing the latest updates while attempting to keep their spirits high, reaching an apex when they all gather together on a group video call and count down the seconds to the Chinese New Year (January 25th in 2020), then exploding in celebration, each alone in their rooms, breaking out into music and dance onscreen, where it’s all captured by cellphones.  Overly rambunctious in their joyous celebration, they spontaneously break out into the hallways and comingle, violating all health protocols, which is immediately shut down by security who orders them all back into their rooms.  It’s a brief moment of elation, lasting only a few minutes, but it captures the essence of what they’re all feeling, just wanting to feel alive again in a world where all the emphasis has shifted to the pandemic.  In just the first few months, a main focus of all the news reports is an inexplicable public health phenomenon that spreads rapidly, with no known cure, becoming more and more contagious, offering a rare glimpse into the Chinese experience of the pandemic, where some of the few surprises includes actual clips of news footage, CCTV surveillance footage, and TikTok-style children’s covers of songs that went viral on the Chinese internet, creating this kaleidoscopic effect, showing how individual experiences are intertwined with surrounding events, bringing us right into the middle of all the chaos and uncertainty.  With little advance warning, authorities completely stifle the population from coming into contact with one another, shutting down the city of Wuhan and the surrounding regions to contain the virus, though six Wuhan hospital doctors died in just the first six months, including infamous whistleblower Dr. Li Wenliang, who warned his colleagues about the virus before succumbing to it himself, and is remembered on TV clips.  Speeding through a collage of conspicuous events over the next several years, including footage of the riots that followed the 2022 Ürümqi fire that sparked nationwide protests against the government’s Zero-COVID policy, which was irrefutably unpopular and controversial, yet the number of infections spiked drastically when the policy was dropped, leading to a massive amount of infections and a staggering death count, which are conspicuously missing from the film, though the magnitude of the loss is profound, feeling more like an elegiac memoriam by the end.  While mostly contained to just a few months immediately after the outbreak, this is a highly personalized, insular view of what transpired, a calm before the storm, as over 7 million people worldwide eventually died.  The film seems to challenge our collective memories, asking if the world has changed significantly since then, are we any different, did we learn anything, and has this situation changed us?  Personal phone calls between Jiang and his wife give way to random videos posted online (click here to watch the video, 4:35), with an imprinted date stamp indicating how long after the outbreak, all poetically capturing the mood and feel of living under lockdown and slowly coming out of hibernation, as if released from captivity, where the joy of simply walking unimpeded down a city street feels like a precious moment of unleashed freedom.    

Suspended Time (Hors du Temps)

 

Director Olivier Assayas

Assayas on the set with Nine D'Urso

actress Nine D'Urso

Assayas with cast on the red carpet in Berlin

SUSPENDED TIME (Hors du Temps)                      C+                                                       France  (105 mi)  2024  d: Olivier Assayas

I wanted to bring a cinema crew within this very intimate space, which is something that movies hardly do.  I thought it was a way of exposing myself.                                                     —Olivier Assayas

For whatever reason, Assayas takes us back to the early stages of the Covid pandemic in 2020, a period of lockdown when stores and restaurants shuttered, leaving people spending the majority of their time indoors, with the director choosing his own childhood home out in the country, a pastoral retreat in the village of Montabé, a small town nestled in the Chevreuse Valley about an hour’s drive from Paris.  It’s an upscale estate surrounded by verdant gardens and woods, filled with empty spaces to hike and explore, where no one is crowding into their space, recalling the summer idyll movies of Éric Rohmer, who had a profound influence on Assayas, both as a Cahiers du Cinéma writer and filmmaker, acknowledging that “Here, time stands still.”  An introductory narrative monologue is spoken by Assayas himself, adding a literary and novelistic flavor, introducing not only the house and the mostly unseen neighborhood homes who own even larger patches of land, but also two couples who are living together in isolation during lockdown, two brothers Paul, Vincent Macaigne, from Assayas’ Non-Fiction (Doubles Vies) (2018) and the recent made-for-TV IRMA VEPP (2022) adaptation of his earlier film Irma Vep (1996), and younger brother Etienne (Micha Lescot), along with their girlfriends Morgane (Nine d’Urso), a documentary filmmaker and Carole (Nora Hamzawi, also in the made-for-TV IRMA VEPP).  Etienne is a music journalist, radio host, and free-spirited rocker with silver hair and tinted dark glasses that are always worn, while Paul is a cinema journalist and filmmaker, perfectly at home with the stacks of old books on his father’s color-coded bookshelves, conjuring up old memories and ghosts of the past.  The two brothers couldn’t be more different, each having their own distinct personality, as Paul is nervous and uptight about just about everything, believing there are exact cautionary procedures to follow to prevent the spread of Covid into their home, like leaving any arriving packages or groceries outside for at least four hours, scrubbing hands afterwards, while rarely venturing into town, but when he does he always wears a mask, and washes his clothes when returning.  Etienne has a more laid back approach, thinking being sensible is the best policy, but that drives his brother nuts, thinking he’s being too blasé about it.  While neither are at high risk for infection, Paul runs around scared all the time, charting infectious rates like an amateur sleuth, worried that they’ll be infected, while Etienne is more worried about the highly restrictive encroachments on his personal freedom.  As there’s constant friction between them, since they haven’t lived with each other since they were children, they each crave their own space, and this gigantic mansion in the woods allows that, where they only come together at meal times, with Etienne spending plenty of time making fun of his brother’s quirky obsessions, while also pursuing his latest habit of making crêpes all the time.  All happening before a vaccine became available, most of us were more severely traumatized during Covid, especially by the spiraling number of deaths that reached into the millions, than anyone seen here, where the life of entitled privilege insulates them from the more unpleasant realities the rest of us faced on a daily basis, like losing our jobs from so many business closures, or close friends and family members to this protracted outbreak, wiping out entire wings of grandparents in nursing homes, while some also lost their homes.   

More than anything, this is a dialogue-heavy film, to the point of making viewers uncomfortable, as they feel little interest in returning to these burdensome times when Covid dominated the landscape, as it was something you couldn’t escape.  Finally free of the complete Covid saturation, Assayas has re-opened the door, like a portal to a lost and forgotten time, and plunged us right into the middle of it again, with the family home providing a legacy to their parents, becoming a ghostly character in itself that haunts everything we see.  Mostly this takes us back to the perfect French countryside of Assayas’ SUMMER HOURS (2008), where languid sunny days were all too common, as the flora of the area is presented in great detail, a world much better represented by the work of painters, questioning whether cinema has lost touch with nature.  But unlike that film, where the characters are well-defined and easily recognizable, played by major stars, these characters are much less interesting, in fact, there’s little interest in them at all, making this something of a slog.  The story revolves around Paul and his ultra-cautious neurotic obsessions about Covid, even watching a YouTube video on how to wash your hands properly as he washes his hands properly, so it gets a little ridiculous, but worst of all are his constant rants about painters, writers, and the world of art, where he endlessly name drops significant cultural figures, discussing the letters of Héloïse and Peter Abelard and the work of British painter and photographer David Hockney, just for starters.  With French art and literary history constantly being referenced, you may need footnotes to follow this movie, as Assayas mines the interiority of the pandemic in uniquely different ways, but fails to make any of this connect, intellectually or emotionally, as they seemingly have meaning to him and him alone, but he never translates that to viewers, who have largely tuned out.  This is significant, as Assayas is something of an art historian, with Paul becoming an alter-ego of the director, but his fascination never becomes ours, as we are continually locked out from what’s seemingly so essential to his life, as it simply never matters, yet he rambles on and on to the point of being unintelligible and pretentious.  His brother Etienne has already tuned out on almost anything and everything he has to say, knowing there’s no connection there, so he doesn’t waste his time, which is a very sensible approach, yet there we are stuck in the middle of a picture that takes us back to a time we’d just as soon forget, with Paul being at the center of it, offering a refresher course on everything we’d rather not remember.  The names of musicians lost to Covid are mentioned, while also mentioning Bob Dylan’s nearly 17-minute song released at the outset of Covid, Bob Dylan - Murder Most Foul (Official Audio) YouTube (16:56), but their music is never heard, which is unfortunate, as that might have expanded Etienne’s role, instead they play the goofball novelty song Snoopy V.S. The Red Baron -- The Royal Guardsman (2:40), also referenced near the end of Quintin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time...in Hollywood (2019).  Cinematographer Éric Gautier captures the mostly empty spaces with a natural light, creating a gentle dreamscape that feels quietly autobiographical.  In real life, Assayas has a younger brother Michka who is a successful music journalist, as well as a daughter whose custody he shares with the now-separated mother, Mia Hansen-Løve (played by Maud Wyler), maker of All Is Forgiven (Tout est pardonée) (2007), Goodbye First Love (Un Amour de Jeunesse) (2011), Eden (2014), Things to Come (L'avenir) (2016), Bergman Island (2021), and One Fine Morning (Un Beau Matin) (2022).   

Resembling the bare-bones, small-scale productions made in the early years of Covid, where there are distinct intersections with the director’s own life, yet while there is an attempt to build important autobiographical links, they seem inconsequential, as what instead stands out is the massive scale of the house and surrounding grounds, a picture of luxuriousness, where it’s hard to picture any kind of trauma happening at that locale, as it offers all the privacy in the world.  If you’re going to be stuck in isolation, that’s the place to be, but who among us had that opportunity, as this simply reeks of privilege, yet this mostly seems to be an expression of blasé banality.  Both brothers are recently separated, leaving children behind as part of the collateral damage, speaking to them via Zoom calls, with Paul also conducting video chat sessions with his therapist (Dominique Reymond, the same part she plays in the recent Assayas made-for-TV adaptation of IRMA VEPP, and a regular in earlier Assayas films), rather preposterously taking place in the great outdoors while sitting under a giant tree, comfortably nestled into the natural world.  This is the last place he should feel stressed, and even acknowledges at some point that he actually likes the idea of lockdown, as if he’s on a permanent vacation of reading and relaxation, allowing him to revisit literature he previously had no time for, claiming it feels almost utopian despite happening in the face of millions dying from a social catastrophe, and even throws in a podcast with Jean Renoir talking about his father Pierre-Auguste Renoir.  But rather than expand on that, the film instead follows the constant bickering between the two brothers, squabbling over health protocols, living a hermetic lifestyle that produces an incessant need for online shopping, where the moral justification only places more money into the coffers of billionaires who show a blatant disregard for the company’s appalling working conditions, with Etienne calling Amazon “a war profiteer,” while blindly forgetting the women in their lives, who are present, but rarely make any meaningful decisions, and instead remain almost entirely in the background.  Plainly speaking, this is one of the weaker Assayas efforts, weaving together pieces of a confinement movie, where the repetitive nature accentuates the claustrophobic feel of the world closing in on them in the form of an ever-spreading, highly infectious killer disease, like some schlock B-movie exploitation horror flick from the 50’s, while characters try to make sense of the cramped, routine existence that they inhabit that resembles the imprisoned doom of Sartre’s No Exit.  While hardly on the same level of other Covid-restrictions movies that would have to include the imaginative flair of Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (Babardeala cu bucluc sau porno balamuc) (2021), the playfulness of Miguel Gomes and Maureen Fazendeiro’s The Tsugua Diaries (Diários de Otsoga) (2021), the unraveling relationships of Claire Denis’ Both Sides of the Blade (Avec amour et acharnement) (2022) or the noirish ambiguity of Stars at Noon (2022), and the wild turns in Joachim Trier’s hypnotically beautiful 2021 #3 Film of the Year The Worst Person in the World (Verdens verste menneske), the Covid experience remains deeply imprinted into our minds and imaginations, yet here self-indulgence and monotony seem to go hand in hand, where the circular monologues feel endlessly exhausting, but a final gesture of love in the air in the middle of an overgrown enchanted forest of Paul’s youth seems like an idyllic hope for a brighter future.