by Finnlay Dall
Worth: $15.30
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Mao Xiaorui, Qin Hao
Intro:
… not only articulates the universal experience of the pandemic, but the specific chaos that erupted from China after the first cases in Wuhan came to light.
What is it like to reunite with old friends, only for some cataclysmic event to abruptly tear you apart once again? For Sixth Generation Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye, that wasn’t just a hypothetical, but a grim reality as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on material from internet videos, his real incomplete project and even An Unfinished Film’s own production, the director not only articulates the universal experience of the pandemic, but the specific chaos that erupted from China after the first cases in Wuhan came to light.
As fictional director Xiaorui (Mao Xiaorui) oversees his crew whilst carrying an old Mac Pro, he decides to record their efforts for prosperity, noting the date as July 15th, 2019. While his assistants get to work unscrewing the backplate on the decade old computer, we watch delicate hands slide in and out of the case as they reconnect hard drives and cables, their work amounting to bomb defusal.
After the computer whirs to life, Xiao’s team scans an incomplete timeline. It’s here where we meet a young Jiang Cheng (Qin Hao). Time folds in on itself as we enter the film. The director scrubs through his performance and we see a young delinquent fall in love with another man. But from the director’s commentary and the disjointed scenes, we can tell the boys’ lives together are about to be cut short.
So, when the older Jiang comes to the studio at the behest of director Xiaoru, it seems as if this star-crossed love story will finally have its ending. However, now a fully booked actor with a wife and small child, Jiang is reluctant about being able to commit time to the project. When he tentatively agrees to shoot late January next year, both he and the director feel hopeful they can finish the film. That is until the day of reshoots, when news of the COVID-19 outbreak reaches their hotel room. And when a case is confirmed by the staff, we, along with Jiang, director Xiaorui and the rest of the crew, are left trapped in their hotel rooms as they try to figure out exactly what is going on.
It’s in this shift from okay autofiction to outbreak re-enactment that helps An Unfinished Film really find its footing. What at first feels like a less interesting My First Film (2024), it actually delves into the far more engaging drama inherent in the early days of the pandemic.
With hindsight, the early signs of COVID-19 adopt a surreal quality. Every slight sneeze or cough puts the audience on edge. And as PAs begin to faint in corridors, friends and family are carted off in ambulances and police barricade the hotel doors, we’re reminded just how apocalyptic those early days were.
Uncertainty is highlighted by the film as a large contributor to that early wave of panic. Fearing the worsening conditions outside the hotel, the director sends most of the actors home, hoping to prioritise Jiang’s reshoots and close down the production quickly. But with the crew getting calls from family members – one assistant even saying that his cousins’ own production was shut down – the cinematographer has to make his own snap decision and asks his assistants to pack up and head home. Meanwhile, a stylist is forced to vacate after the hotel manager makes it clear that he doesn’t want anyone from Wuhan inside the building. At least, that’s what the production manager thought he heard from one of the crew members. No character – including the police – gives a straight or definitive answer, and this lack of knowledge is what drives us to root for Jiang as he attempts to leave the building.
Locked in just before he can leave with his co-stars, the actor is forced to find a different way out, only to panic when he’s met with inevitable resistance by police officers on the upper floor. The aggression he’s met with is sudden if unsurprising. He’s dragged kicking and screaming back to his room, but not before one of the officers socks him in the face.
From here, we stay with a bruised and bloody Jiang in his hotel room, the days leading up to the New Year blending into one another. Ye’s lack of hard cuts – which started as a way of merging past and present in the film – start disorienting the viewer, as we begin to lose time with Jiang. Daytime meals, exercise routines and phone calls with his wife and child slow time to a crawl. These long, unbroken shots intentionally contrast the previous scramble, as Ye conveys the struggle of isolation for those left to a solitary lockdown. There’s an empathy for Jiang’s situation that thankfully steers away from the conspiratorial and focuses on the personal struggle of staying sane while being completely alone.
Ye never takes us away from the grim reality of the situation, as many of the social media posts that Jiang watches or records are real videos and articles taken straight from the internet. The most harrowing of which is a woman wailing outside his window. As she screams after her mother’s corpse, he records her dragging her feet towards the ambulance; alive all but in spirit.
Jiang’s connection to the outside world is not completely hopeless, as the cast and crew’s New Year’s party grants the audience a fun and shockingly nostalgic video call sequence. As the cinematographer drapes himself in LED strips, crew members dance around their rooms, and eventually, everyone organises an illegal excursion to the hotel hallway, it becomes a fond reminder that despite the doom and gloom, many of us learned to make the most of the time (and technology) that we had.
While the following months continued to be somewhat tumultuous for the Chinese people, with the Omicron variant leading to a far harsher lockdown and city riots, An Unfinished Film ends with its own cast and crew screening in 2023. And as they meet up in person for the first time in years, it seems to encompass our attitude to the pandemic as a whole: that while years, people and logic vanished before our very eyes, our need to connect and want to see our family and friends again is ultimately what made it possible to take back some sense of normalcy.
