Journey to the West: Made in China

Zhengfan Yang and His Cry for Belonging

Stranger was the film awarded by the main jury of this year’s Proxima competition at Karlovy Vary. Although the Proxima competition pushed the boundaries of film language, it wasn’t the strongest part of the festival’s program as a whole. Nevertheless, there were pearls to be found in this section, and one of them came from China – from the deep waters of independent film, with all the fragility that today’s Chinese identity entails.

Zhengfan Yang is an established author who started his film journey at the age of 22. As he approaches 40, he has completed two features and two documentaries and has a presence at festivals including Locarno, Rotterdam, Visions du Réel and Taipei. While studying an MFA program in Hong Kong, he met the producer Shengze Zhu. She helped him launch his feature debut Distant (Yuan fang) in 2013, and they have been working tirelessly together ever since. In the new slow cinema feature Stranger, the director, currently based in Chicago and straddling the East-West divide, explores an issue close to his heart: the loss of home and identity.

In Stranger, this very common theme is explored in unconventional short sections with a strong auteurist style. Six stories and one epilogue are covered by the title. The motif of strangeness is woven into all the locations: each story is set in an impersonal hotel room which we enter like a stranger. The characters are always new and the situations always seem to be original.

Losing and Finding

The very first story introduces the hotel’s guests and maids, identified by numbers. One of the “numbers” in this situation dresses up in someone else’s clothes, with dignity intact. The protagonists of the second story also maintain their pride, despite their lack of residence and their unwillingness to prove their identity with documents. Everything is under question here – the question of home as well as their interrogation by police officers.

A seemingly joyful wedding photo shoot takes place, in which the camera waltzes around the photographers, only gradually revealing that the only people not enjoying themselves are the newlyweds. Understandable, since the denial of sexual orientation is not a cause for celebration.

The real intention behind one’s need to leave the country can also be denied. Especially if you’re going through airport security, to give birth to a child in the US, which has become a fairly common reality for Chinese women nowadays. But in this case it’s a good idea to rehearse every moment according to a prearranged script. A face pack can help hide anything that needs to be gotten rid of, until the plane arrives.

The precise camera runs that make this film stand out are also complemented in several cases by striking transitions between scenes, if not the stories themselves. A notable example is the way in which the above story moves into an airplane environment through the opening of a curtain and an unprecedented editing transition. The unexpected revelation that the hotel room is actually located very near the airport is complemented by a sudden direct transfer to the plane. The engines are revving at full speed, as are the camera angles. Which begs the transitional question: whose identity belongs to the space of the plane?

On the formal level, the work with space in general is outstanding, supported by ubiquitous long takes. The camera is an observer that rolls without judgment and boundaries.

Trapped Heroes

When crossing distant borders, time lag is omnipresent. It distances us from ourselves. This is what the penultimate story shows, portraying a girl who is trapped in the belief that the COVID quarantine is ongoing. Locked in her hotel room, streaming online to a world that is no longer what it used to be, she compensates for her solitude by contacting strangers and hoping for a sign of understanding. After years of traveling, she is a stranger everywhere, even in her native country – and also, in the end, on the internet. One of the film’s strongest segments, this one features professional actors and the contrast is noticeable. Still, the work with non-actors in other stories is impressive.  

In all these stories, loneliness is prolonged by the attempt to not let anyone in. Not even hotel service!  After all, why keep order when we’re alone and isolated? While the beginning of the film focuses on the work of a chambermaid, and another story celebrates the hotel’s lavish furnishings, by the end of the film the shots (and the rooms) are full of clutter. This also means that the metaphorical disintegration of personality is complete.

This holds true in the last story, which looks at the preparations of a roving performer for collecting money on the street. A superhero disguise protects this character from their grim reality. But how long will this cloaking last? 

Behind the Curtain, A Viewer

The film’s epilogue contains a long frontal shot of a building with individually lit apartments that gradually fade out like squares in a game of bingo. Everything is colorfully styled and complemented by the overpowering sounds of the street, leading the viewer from enclosed privacy back into the swirl of the city and society. The strangers have found their place, the audience have rightfully become voyeurs, and now the curtain can finally be drawn again.

Štěpánka Zapata
Edited by Lesley Chow
© FIPRESCI 2024