[ad_1]
In 2013, filmmaker Anthony Chen’s first characteristic, “Ilo Ilo,” gained the coveted Caméra d’Or at Cannes. Centered across the inseparable bond between a 10-year-old Singaporean boy and his Filipina nanny, Chen’s full-length debut deployed a particular lens — a household weathering the 1997 Asian monetary disaster — to inform a common story exploring the nooks and crannies of our shared humanity. Flash ahead to precisely a decade later, Chen makes his triumphant in-competition return to Cannes with “The Breaking Ice,” a shifting, humanist snapshot of China’s misplaced youths instructed via a ships-in-the-night friendship.
READ MORE: 2023 Cannes Film Festival: 21 Must-See Movies To Watch
In frigid Yanji on China’s northernmost border with North Korea, Haofeng (Liu Haoran) — a younger skilled from Shanghai grappling together with his personal failures — is feeling unmoored. Taking a neighborhood bus on a whim, he’s immediately captivated by the journey firm’s tour information: the charming Nana (Zhou Dongyu). The two strike up a fast camaraderie, quickly to be joined by Xiao (Qu Chuxiao), an aggrieved restaurant employee and Nana’s buddy. Plied with alcohol and the excitement of recent companionship, the three quick mates embark upon a short-lived — but unforgettable — journey, entwining their private demons and effervescent needs throughout a wintry panorama.
Very very similar to “Ilo Ilo,” “The Breaking Ice’s” fascinatingly slender milieu is utilized to strike on the coronary heart of pervasive, emotional truths. Tugging at threads explored all through his total filmography, particularly the burden of intimate bonds shared amongst strangers, Chen fastidiously constructs his whirlwind story via the backdrop of Yanji. It is perhaps performed out to label a setting as “a character in and of itself,” however “The Breaking Ice” intentionally wraps its three out-of-towner protagonists round an inscrutable metropolis as alive as its guests. A bustling but icy locale sitting on the peninsula border of China and Korea, Yanji has denizens inside a hybrid tradition talking each Mandarin and Korean, emphasizing our trio of misplaced souls and their abbreviated journey to seek out some semblance of self.
Leave it to Chen to bypass the pitfalls of melodrama together with his humanist method. The inevitable love triangle — two males falling for a similar lady — is superbly understated as a thorny undercurrent somewhat than a fundamental attraction. Aided by DP Yu Jin-Pin’s sumptuously intimate lensing — via hazy, sensual close-ups and vibrant compositions — “The Breaking Ice” favors the depth of the red-hot bonds of ephemeral friendships over trite, heightened theater.
Chen has himself copped to his influences, citing the sway of masters reminiscent of François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, however it’s no mere imitation. Drawn via three mesmerizing performances from Liu Haoran, Zhou Dongyu, and Qu Chuxiao, “The Breaking Ice” transmogrifies its admiration for French New Wave as loving, affecting homage. The central dynamic — and truncated chronology — takes after Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim,” however the trio clearly speaks with a distinct cadence to Chen’s personal fascination with China’s youth. Godard’s iconic traipse via the Louvre in “Bande à part” is reconfigured right here as nicely, morphed right into a playful shoplifting competitors at a bookstore and an uproarious spotlight.
What Anthony Chen’s movies lack in sticking to the ribs is greater than made up for of their emotional verisimilitude, and “The Breaking Ice” isn’t any exception. Filmed with barely a working script, Chen’s feature-length return to Cannes is a daring experiment that pays off handsomely, an exploration of the whole spectrum of a era’s hopes, desires, and anxieties via a laser-focused milieu. Its interweaving of highly effective performances and religious complexity, ultimately melded with native folklore, is nothing wanting stunning. Welcome again, Anthony Chen. [A-]
Follow together with all our protection from the 2023 Cannes Film Festival
[ad_2]