Long Day's Journey into Night

Having attained an indie aesthetic in his 2015 debut, Kaili Blues, director Bi Gan attempts an art-house epic in this intricately intense film noir, which pays teasing homage to several of Asian cinema's leading auteurs as well as Alfred Hitchcock and Andrei Tarkovsky. Returning to his home city of Kaili, Huang Jue goes looking for mystery woman Tang Wei, who abandoned his dead buddy for a gangster. But anything approaching a plot plays second fiddle to the meld of emotion and atmosphere, as Bi explores the blurred boundaries between reality, reverie and recollection. Starting in a rundown movie theatre, the entire second half of the picture is comprised of a single shot in 3D that utilises audacious camera moves to take us inside the mind of both the protagonist and his creator. Images of flowing water and suspended time abound in an immersive, but self-consciously audacious enterprise whose intrigue lies more in its formal design and execution than its narrative content.