The 61st edition of Taipei’s Golden Horse Film Festival and Awards (held November 7-24) is one of Asia’s biggest festivals and plays an important role mainly in Chinese-language Asian cinema. The eight first features selected for the FIPRESCI prize offer a panoramic view of young Chinese-language cinema. Qiu Yang’s Some Rains Must Fall (2024), which had its world premiere in the Encounters section of the 74th Berlinale 2024, won the FIPRESCI prize. The film’s powerful direction is coupled with a strong desire to renew the image of Asian women, who are all too often victimized and made to feel miserable in oriental films at major international festivals. The female character in this film does not remain passive, she is not a man’s accessory and faces up to the violence, both visible and invisible, of society. The film is entirely devoted to this character. The filmmaker draws a portrait of Cai, no doubt inspired by that of his own mother, who remains steadfast in her determination to change her life. Qiu Yang’s first feature film was born of the desire and need to film her. It’s quite exceptional today that so many qualities can come together in a first feature film. Most films by young filmmakers seem manufactured, far removed from their personal desires, and dictated by the demands of the film industry. Everything looks the same, everything is too often formatted. Yang miraculously managed to preserve his perspective of cinema, which is intrinsically linked to the intimacy of his life.
Qiu Yang is a young filmmaker who is already showing promise in the strength of his short films: he won the Palme d’Or for A Gentil Night in 2017 and the Grand Prix de la Semaine de la Critique de Cannes for She Runs in 2019. From the outset, he focuses on women in modern Chinese society. Yang has always preferred to film in his hometown and works with amateur actors. His time in this city has enabled him to build on his experience. The continuity of his obsession is crystallized in his first feature film. Some Rains Must Fall focuses on a woman trying to change her life and stay the course, despite several unexpected obstacles. Cai, a housewife in her forties, is amid divorce proceedings. She inadvertently injures an older woman during her daughter’s basketball game. This seemingly innocuous event is the catalyst that sends her life spiraling out of control, past events resurfacing as she heads towards an uncertain future. The filmmaker does not directly explain her motivations, emotions, or psychology through narration, and certainly not through overly accessible symbolic images. We discover this woman in front of a camera that maintains its distance and fixity. The camera is like a spectator watching and observing her, capturing her in profile or from behind. Shot by shot, the mise en scène cuts out various secret things, a hidden dimension of her life. In the end, the image of this woman is still not fully formed, and her mysteries are not revealed, but we realize the intensity of this life lived between reality and dream. Several scenes in which we find her in the middle of a great black void are suddenly inserted between scenes of reality. These phantasmagorical sequences, along with the minimalism of the narration, give relief to the direction. Qiu Yang will undoubtedly be a force to be reckoned with. Some Rain Must Fall is a film of mise en scène that proves his talent and opens our eyes to a new Asian cinema we haven’t seen in a long time.
By Nanako Tsukidate
Edited by Anne-Christine Loranger
©FIPRESCI 2024