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ABC News
05-05-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
This COVID-19 film is set right near Wuhan in mid-2019, straddling both documentary and fiction
An Unfinished Film is likely to repel those of us who refuse to be catapulted back to the strange, surreal and terrifying year of 2020. But what differentiates Lou Ye's docufiction film — beyond its layer upon layer of constructed meaning — is that it comes to us from the eye of the storm: a town near Wuhan. Fast facts about An Unfinished Film What: A meta, self-referential docufiction film that takes you to ground zero of COVID-19. Directed by: Lou Ye Starring: Mao Xiaorui, Qin Hao, Qi Xi Where: In cinemas now Likely to make you feel: An intense feeling of déjà vu As the severity of a new virus is making itself known, a film's cast and crew — a microcosm of millions of Chinese citizens — grapple with authoritarian dictates, enforced separations from their loved ones, and mounting pandemonium as billions of people around the world continue their lives unscathed, unaware things are about to indelibly change. The film doesn't start in this place, however. It opens in mid-2019 with a crew, led by director Xiaorui (Mao Xiaorui), unearthing a 10-year-old computer with footage of the director's aborted queer film. This half-finished film is cobbled together from real-life outtakes and b-roll captured for Lou's own previous films, but the conceit surrounding its rediscovery is fictional — the first of many instances throughout the film where fact and fiction are interweaved and the boundary between pretence and reality is muddied. The unfinished film is an intimate one, centred on a queer man desiring someone who's already in a relationship, with actor Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao, who did play a gay man in a Lou film) the lead. Qin Hao (l) also played a main character called Jiang in Lou's 2009 film Spring Fever, and footage from that is used in the film. ( Supplied: Sharmill ) Filming was suspended due to creative differences with the funders — gesturing towards China's strict censorship laws — but Xiaorui wants to resume shooting it — partly out of a guilt he feels towards the cast and crew, partly due to a deep-seated desire to see it realised as a fully formed thing. In a thoughtful debate between the introspective director Xiaorui and the frank Jiang Cheng — with the former trying to convince the latter to come back on board to finish the film — Lou raises interesting questions. What's the point of making art? Assuming the film doesn't pass the censorship board and make it into cinemas, who's the film in service of? The same questions could be asked of An Unfinished Film, which can't be shown in China to the very people who lived through what it's documenting. Fast forward to February 2019 and it's clear Jiang Cheng has relented to reshooting the film. Fresh off the birth of his baby son, Paopao, he's staying in a hotel near Wuhan with cast and crew as they finish shooting the film's last few scenes. But providence has other plans for them. A mysterious illness is taking hold of Wuhan, and the authorities act swiftly and decisively, cordoning off the hotel to anyone entering or leaving after a crew member collapses from what is later confirmed to be COVID. Mao Xiaorui (l), who is a director himself, plays director Xiaorui in An Unfinished Film. ( Supplied: Sharmill ) Cue an imposed lockdown for all the cast and crew left behind, including Jiang Cheng, who becomes the eyes through which we witness the early stages of the pandemic unfold. Confined to his room after a thwarted attempt to escape the hotel, he occupies himself by filming goings-on from his window and engaging in the Chinese equivalent of FaceTime with his emotionally frayed wife Sang Qi (Qi Xi) as their lives transpire in parallel — he under hotel arrest, she under house arrest caring for their infant son. Stripped bare of any artifice, the naked intensity of their conversations captures a couple in crisis — their unbridled happiness at being new parents is tinged with a heightened feeling of vulnerability as they're besieged by stories of families split up in the ensuing melee. "I am such a coward now," Jiang Cheng remarks as he contemplates his oversized importance to his family. Their shared grief brings out truisms, but clichés are clichés for a reason. Many things about Lou's film will jump out to a Western audience. One of them is the striking readiness of everyone in the hotel to immediately don a mask once it's clear a mysterious illness is afoot. It's regarded as the natural thing to protect oneself and others, instead of something contestable that infringes upon one's person-hour, as it's been construed in the West. In the blend of documentary and feature, DOP Jian Zeng appears here as himself. ( Supplied: Sharmill ) With most of the film confined to the four walls of Jiang Cheng's hotel room, it necessarily loses the momentum of the frenzied scenes that accompanied the rollout of the hotel's lockdown and veers into something far more mundane and repetitious — befitting the new rhythm of Jiang Cheng's days. The discombobulation of the moment in time is adroitly captured by Lou in a move similar to The Seed of the Sacred Fig's director, Mohammad Rasoulof, who A particularly memorable montage ensues when quarantined cast and crew jump on a group call to celebrate the eve of Lunar New Year, their giddy delirium at celebrating together in isolation capturing something highly distinct and unforgettable about those early moments of connection in the pandemic. Lou wrote the script with his wife and longtime co-writer, Ma Yingli, who's also a director. ( Supplied: Sharmill ) The effect of the film disperses slightly when it moves from its fly-on-the-wall approach to the swift documenting of various events of the time through the framing of a mobile phone. The February 2020 death of At a time when the broader world has erroneously moved on from safeguarding against a life-threatening virus, it's striking to be transported back to a time and place so unlike the West: where walls were scrubbed clean to prevent contamination, hotels were locked down due to a single positive case of COVID, and people were quarantined without an end in sight. A sort of undeniable truth emerges from a film too fictive to be considered a documentary but too factual to be considered a feature. And within it, perhaps there is some hope of collective catharsis for China. Loading YouTube content
Sydney Morning Herald
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Confused by this movie? That's the idea
AN UNFINISHED FILM Directed by Lou Ye 106 minutes, rated M Selected cinemas Reviewed by JAKE WILSON ★★★½ The intriguing thing about Lou Ye's film is that at first, there's no way to be sure what you're looking at. Some kind of combination of fiction and documentary, it would appear: a caption tells us that the year is 2019, and a Chinese film crew is gathered around a studio monitor looking at footage from a film abandoned a decade earlier. Just why the plug was pulled is open to speculation, but we can take a guess, given the story centres on a gay couple, an increasingly taboo subject in Chinese media since the 2000s (Lou has a history of battles with censors, and was officially banned from filmmaking for five years following his release of his 2006 Summer Palace, which deals with the Tiananmen Square massacre). The unflappable director Xiaorui (Mao Xiaorui) still feels an obligation to complete the film, even if it can't be shown publicly. His leading man, Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao), isn't so sure. Time has moved on, he argues, and he has to focus on making a living, especially as he's recently married with a child on the way. The casual, handheld style might lead you to suppose all this is happening for real – and even when the penny drops that Xiaorui and Jiang are fictional characters, it wouldn't be illogical to think Lou has devised this framework as a way of making use of footage from a project he himself was unable to complete. In fact, there was no actual 'unfinished film'. The older material being recycled consists of outtakes and rehearsals from Lou's previous features, including the 2009 Spring Fever, in which Qin did play a gay character named 'Jiang Cheng' (and which was made without the Chinese government's approval, officially as a co-production between Hong Kong and France). This is tricky stuff, and it gets trickier. Jiang was planning to take some time off following the birth of his child, but reluctantly agrees to be available for reshoots around the time of the new year, which is to say late January 2020, going by the Western calendar. Let's see, what else was happening around then? Perhaps it'll jog your memory if I mention that the cast and crew wind up staying in a hotel in the city of Wuhan in central China. This is roughly a quarter of the way into An Unfinished Film, after which it becomes a story about the pandemic. Once lockdown is imposed, the focus shifts from Xiaorui to Jiang, who's understandably desperate to get home to his family. He's stuck in his hotel room for much of the central portion of the film, speaking tenderly with his wife (Qi Xi) on the Chinese equivalent of FaceTime.
The Age
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Confused by this movie? That's the idea
AN UNFINISHED FILM Directed by Lou Ye 106 minutes, rated M Selected cinemas Reviewed by JAKE WILSON ★★★½ The intriguing thing about Lou Ye's film is that at first, there's no way to be sure what you're looking at. Some kind of combination of fiction and documentary, it would appear: a caption tells us that the year is 2019, and a Chinese film crew is gathered around a studio monitor looking at footage from a film abandoned a decade earlier. Just why the plug was pulled is open to speculation, but we can take a guess, given the story centres on a gay couple, an increasingly taboo subject in Chinese media since the 2000s (Lou has a history of battles with censors, and was officially banned from filmmaking for five years following his release of his 2006 Summer Palace, which deals with the Tiananmen Square massacre). The unflappable director Xiaorui (Mao Xiaorui) still feels an obligation to complete the film, even if it can't be shown publicly. His leading man, Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao), isn't so sure. Time has moved on, he argues, and he has to focus on making a living, especially as he's recently married with a child on the way. The casual, handheld style might lead you to suppose all this is happening for real – and even when the penny drops that Xiaorui and Jiang are fictional characters, it wouldn't be illogical to think Lou has devised this framework as a way of making use of footage from a project he himself was unable to complete. In fact, there was no actual 'unfinished film'. The older material being recycled consists of outtakes and rehearsals from Lou's previous features, including the 2009 Spring Fever, in which Qin did play a gay character named 'Jiang Cheng' (and which was made without the Chinese government's approval, officially as a co-production between Hong Kong and France). This is tricky stuff, and it gets trickier. Jiang was planning to take some time off following the birth of his child, but reluctantly agrees to be available for reshoots around the time of the new year, which is to say late January 2020, going by the Western calendar. Let's see, what else was happening around then? Perhaps it'll jog your memory if I mention that the cast and crew wind up staying in a hotel in the city of Wuhan in central China. This is roughly a quarter of the way into An Unfinished Film, after which it becomes a story about the pandemic. Once lockdown is imposed, the focus shifts from Xiaorui to Jiang, who's understandably desperate to get home to his family. He's stuck in his hotel room for much of the central portion of the film, speaking tenderly with his wife (Qi Xi) on the Chinese equivalent of FaceTime.
New York Times
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘An Unfinished Film' Review: When Reality Interrupts Art
It's a little hard to get a grasp on what 'An Unfinished Film' is at first. This semifictional drama opens with a film crew booting up a 10-year-old computer, hoping their footage will still be there. And after a little finagling, the screen springs to life. Director Xiaorui (Mao Xiaorui) watches, rapt, as a younger version of himself appears onscreen. This is a film he tried to make 10 years ago, but abandoned for reasons that start to become clear as he explains the plot to others. Director Xiaorui watches as his aborted film's star, Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao), appears onscreen as well, and starts to get some ideas. Jiang is now a big movie star, married and with a baby on the way, but when the director calls and asks him if they might try to finish the film, he's intrigued. Why not? This is a straightforward enough start to a movie, but it's all a little meta. For instance, Mao, the actor who plays the director, has served as assistant director to Lou Ye, the actual director of 'An Unfinished Film.' And Qin, who plays Jiang Cheng, is another frequent Lou collaborator. The footage that they're watching is in fact outtakes and B-roll from others of Lou's films, including 'Suzhou River,' 'Mystery,' 'Spring Fever' and 'The Shadow Play.' And Lou has some experience with filmmaking stops and starts; his movies have repeatedly been banned in China for running afoul of censors, and he has been put under several-year prohibitions from filmmaking several times as well — dictates he has at times ignored. So this feels personal for Lou, and it keeps getting more personal, in ways that global audiences will easily understand. Director Xiaorui, Jiang and the crew decide to shoot the rest of the film just before the Chinese New Year — but it's January 2020, and they're shooting in a hotel located near Wuhan. News of a virus spreads. By the time they decide to shut down production and head to their homes to wait it out, it's too late. After some confusion and panic that feels ripped straight from zombie films, things become eerily quiet. Everyone must quarantine, alone, in their rooms. They don't know when they'll get out. Now reality narrows down to what they can see on their phones and computer screens, including for Jiang, whose wife, Sang Qi (Qi Xi), is increasingly panicked about Jiang ever making it home. Alone in his room, trying to retain his sanity, he watches the world coping with quarantine, observing videos of people dancing and recording his own videos for his child. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
