Resurrection (Drama)

Rating:

Director: Bi Gan
Producer: Yang Lele,Charles Gillibert,Shan Zuolong
Screenwriter: Zhai Xiaohui,Bi Gan
Cinematographer: Dong Jingsong
Composer: M83
Editor: Bai Xue,Bi Gan
Production Designer: Liu Qiang,Tu Nan
Costume Designer: Hwarng Wern-Ying
Key Cast: Shu Qi,Jackson Yee,Chen Yongzhong,Li Gengxi,Mark Chao,Huang Jue

Winner of the Cannes Prix Spécial, the third feature from Bi Gan is a sweeping sensorial odyssey and a meditation on human and film history.

Somewhere in the future, humans have discovered the secret to immortality: not dreaming. While most of society has embraced this practice, rebellious Fantasmers continue indulging in nightly reveries, obligating the Big Others to put a stop to their defiance. One such Fantasmer, now decrepit and monstrous, escapes into the dream realm. As a Big Other chases after him, the film shapeshifts across genres and epochs, prioritising a different bodily sense over each of its five chapters.

This breathtaking, convention-defying phantasmagoria sees Bi Gan (Long Day’s Journey Into Night, MIFF 2019) assemble myriad cinematic references – silent film, German expressionism, Andrei Tarkovsky, Alfred Hitchcock, Wong Kar-wai, Tsai Ming-liang – with the skill of both a master storyteller and a true cinephile. It’s also yet another showcase of his and returning DOP Dong Jingsong’s talents for visualising the oneiric, here enhanced by electro-synth group M83’s morphing score. Starring Chinese heartthrob Jackson Yee and Hou Hsiao-hsien regular Shu Qi (The Assassin, MIFF 2015; Millennium Mambo, MIFF 2002), Resurrection dabbles in manifold metaphors: cinema’s and vampires’ shared dependence on darkness; China’s ascent into modernity’s ‘light’; the haziness of memory; the surreal logic of simulations. But, at heart, it embraces the dual function of dreams – as escapism, and as a way to envisage anew.

“A triumph of sheer audacity and exceptional craft … Narratively and stylistically chameleonic, it’s a sci-fi-flavored, century-spanning cinematic collage and profound invitation to dream.” – The Film Stage