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The COVID-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on both movies and movie theaters. Few films that directly address the pandemic reflect that experience, and the most memorable COVID movie so far has been Nicole Kidman’s 2021 commercial for AMC Theatres, which was intended to renew interest in moviegoing once theaters reopened. Now, Chinese director Lou Ye’s new project, Unfinished Film, takes Kidman’s trailer a step further: If the AMC commercial hints at the pandemic’s impact on the film industry, Lou’s film dramatizes the effects of COVID on the filmmaking process itself.
On one level, Unfinished Film is a historical drama that examines the emergence and spread of the virus in China to track its impact on the lives of ordinary people, including those involved in extraordinary filmmaking efforts. The story begins in July 2019 and centers on an unfinished film that a Beijing-based filmmaker named Xiaorui made a decade ago and now seeks to complete. However, Lu’s film is also a carefully crafted, self-reflexive combination of fictional and documentary elements. Specifically, the role of director Xiaorui is played by Mao Xiaorui, who is also the director, and Lu expands the dramatic story to include real footage of life during the pandemic. Moreover, the unfinished film within the film is composed of pre-existing footage that Lu shot more than a decade ago, and the plot of Unfinished Film includes fictional characters from Lu’s earlier works. In essence, Lu, who co-wrote the screenplay with his wife and longtime collaborator Ma Yingli, who also directs, treats all found footage, both documentary and fiction, as archival and historical records alike. The complex interweaving of fiction and documentary elements, past and present, creates a radically destabilizing effect that is inseparable from the boldness of Lu’s political vision.
As the film begins, footage from an unfinished movie within him is stuck on an old computer. After Xiaorui’s assistants manage to get the computer working and restore the footage, Xiaorui invites one of the lead actors, Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao), to watch the film with him. (Qin also starred as the lead, also named Jiang, in Lu’s 2009 film Spring Fever, and footage from that shoot is included here.) After the screening, Xiaorui asks Jiang to join him and the other crew members to finish the film. The plan is to film in a southern city and then bring back the same character ten years later, now caught up in a regional construction boom. The main difficulty is that ten years ago, Jiang was young and unknown, with a lot of time on his hands, whereas now he is a professional actor in high demand, and it is difficult for him to find time to film. Moreover, he is married, and his wife is expecting their first child, due in December. However, he reluctantly agrees to join Xiaorui and the rest of the cast and crew for new filming in late January 2020.
The rest is up to you: As rumors spread of a new viral infection in Wuhan, not far from the filming location, a crew member falls ill, and An Unfinished Film evolves into a tense thriller, an experiential account of the transition from rumors and fears to the complete transformation of daily life and Chinese society as a whole. As the countrywide lockdown spreads, the cast and crew are not only quarantined in their hotel, but also isolated in their rooms, forbidden from gathering together or even going into the hallways. Workers in hazmat suits bring food and essentials to their room doors, and guards stand ready to enforce solitary confinement on guests if necessary. The collective drama centers on Jiang, whose wife, Sun Qi (Qi Xi), is quarantined in their Beijing home with their newborn daughter. Over extended video calls, Jiang shows and tells her about the spread of the infection, the number of ambulances, the conditions they are in; On his phone, he records what happens from his hotel room, including a woman sobbing in an alley behind the hotel as an ambulance takes away her mother's body.
Working as a filmmaker in China and navigating its ever-changing censorship system, Lu turns 60 this month, having started making films in the early 1990s. He has always been a cinematic innovator. His films do more than their outer contours suggest, opening hidden portals into forbidden zones through hints and omissions, wry ricochets and conspicuous silences. His complex 2000 gangster drama Suzhou River, for example, becomes a quasi-documentary account of police corruption and underworld violence, told from the perspective of an anonymous character who is a videographer—essentially a director who dares not reveal his name. Lu pushed the boundaries of literal and overt expression in China with his 2006 historical drama Summer Palace, set against the backdrop of Tiananmen Square, and when he showed
Sourse: newyorker.com
