Bai ta zhi guang

The white stupa of the Miaoying Temple in Beijing serves as the eponymous central metaphor of Zhang Lu’s quiet exploration of an existentialist crisis. The main symptom of this crisis is alienation, which seemingly isn’t only being experienced by Gu—a divorced, middle-aged food critic and failed poet—but by the whole of the Chinese capital, so efective at renovating and repainting its walls that there do indeed appear to be no more shadows to hide in, no more traces of lives lived. As Gu melancholically drifts between a relationship with his younger colleague, his hapless attempts at being a good dad and a visit to his own estranged father, generational gaps loom that seem impossible to overcome; the past is gone and the present serves a future no one will live to see. Although living spaces here are narrow, physical intimacy is out of the question. Even when someone kisses Gu, he is asked to not kiss back. In his precise and sometimes otherworldly combinations of wide shots and distant sounds, Zhang succeeds in showing people as products of their environments. The film thus also makes a subtle political statement, one that questions China’s unique approach to neoliberalism. (Patrick Holzapfel)

Zhang Lu: ELEVEN (2001, K), TANG POETRY (2003), GRAIN IN EAR (2005), HYAZGAR DESERT DREAM (2007), CHONGQING (2008), DOOMAN RIVER (2010), SCENERY (2013), GYEONGJU (2014), LOVE AND... (2015), A QUIET DREAM (2016), ODE TO THE GOOSE (2018), FUKUOKA (2019), YANAGAWA (2021)