January 2020. A film crew meets in a hotel near Wuhan to resume production of a feature film interrupted ten years earlier due to financing problems. A film about the love between two men which, according to the crew, would " not pass censorship " - a situation with which Lou Ye is very familiar, having himself been banned from filming for 5 years by the Chinese government after A Chinese Youth.
In the meantime, some have grown in stature, others in weight, but all are determined to bring this aborted project to fruition. But the shadow of Don Quixote hangs decidedly over this cursed film, and an unexpected event - the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic- once again upsets the preparations. The film crew finds itself confined to the interior of the hotel, with their TV screens and smartphones as their only contact with the outside world.
This synopsis, which takes us back to the dark hours of the global pandemic, is that of Chroniques Chinoises, the new feature film by Lou Ye(Mystery, Blind Massage, Saturday Fiction), previewed at the last Cannes Film Festival and due in French cinemas on October 23, 2024. The starting point is true (the Chinese director's rediscovery of an unfinished film), the rest (the film crew's confinement to a hotel) is fiction.
A veritable work of containment of the kind the pandemic spawned in the years that followed, Chroniques Chinoises is set at the heart of the epidemic, even though words have yet to be put on the situation that is unfolding. While the Coronavirus has left its mark on the minds of the entire world population, it's worth remembering that China was particularly hard hit by theepidemic that started in Wuhan. The Chinese population was subsequently placed under house arrest for several months at a time, coupled with drastic health restrictions.
Staged as a documentary, with a handheld camera and no intrusive music, the film looks back at this out-of-time period in great detail - in the manner of rushes from the film within the film, and its actors forever trapped on film as if in a time capsule. What's more, our later knowledge of the situation gives us a cruel advantage over the characters, who are unaware of what awaits them and take offense at the first restrictive measures - the wearing of masks, the isolation in rooms, the ban on getting together to celebrate Chinese New Year.
By multiplying the number of screens on the screen ( televisions that play the same news over and over again; telephones that are used to contact family and friends on video and refresh social networks), Chroniques Chinoises documents from the inside, while leaving room for the growing boredom that invades its characters, in need of the outside world.
A pretext for blurring the lines between fiction and documentary, between faux making-of meta and true recollection of the facts (the death of whistle-blower Li Wenliang, for example), enhanced byarchive footage unknown to Western audiences. And the unfinished (fictional) film gradually evolves into a (very real) confinement film. Despite its closed-door nature, Chroniques Chinoises is a film of great density, and a testimony to an era that we all hope, deep down, will never come to pass.
Cinema: which film to see today, this Wednesday September 18, 2024?
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Dates and Opening Time
Starts October 23, 2024
Cinema: which film to see today, this Wednesday September 18, 2024?
Cinema: dramas and thrillers currently showing in cinemas and coming soon
