Yi Xiong’s A Tortoise’s Year of Fate takes place in a factory in China where the workers drift through humdrum lives and slivers of independence distract from a lack of any real autonomy.
The director’s previous short film, Singing Along with a Farewell (2020) was a rumination on the shifting nature of social interactions in Shanghai, specifically focused on those in old age. In his new film, which premieres this week at Locarno, there is a similar sense of attempting to navigate the impact of modernity in China through the changing shape of relationships. Set against a backdrop of mass manufacture and regimented labour, the story examines the ambivalence of present-day life and the need for workers to explore their own paths of liberation in a system designed to curtail it.
One such worker, Bing (Ziyuh Xiong), is new to the factory and initially seems to embody the drifting malaise of a hopeless future. He speaks rarely and when he does, he is virtually monosyllabic. Even when presented alongside co-workers, he is shown to be distant and impassive; in the day he stands on the production line, spraying the metal parts passing through his station, at night he wanders the empty building. However, through a series of actions – striking up a conversation with a female colleague Nana (Wuyang Zhang), who is from the same region as him, or visiting a travelling fortune-teller that relies on the magical properties of a 500-year-old tortoise – he dislocates himself somehow from the mundane flow of the system.
The film is handsomely mounted, with Qi Wu’s cinematography simultaneously emphasising Bing’s emotional remoteness and his subsummation into the toiling masses. Framing him in wide shots allows him to be either visually isolated or almost invisible within the overall-wearing multitudes – presenting both situations as parts of the same overarching condition. As Bing begins to forge his own path, the camera punches in a little and the framing changes. Through Bing’s minor acts of rebellion, Xiong crafts an unexpectedly moving portrait that highlights a contemporary ill, in China and beyond, while also subtly suggesting the individual willpower that can perhaps act as its antidote.
Director, screenplay: Yi Xiong
Cast: Ziyun Xiong, Wuyang Zhang, Zifeng Lin, Yu Sun
Producer: Zhenyi Li
Cinematography: Qi Wu
Editing: Sylvia Cong
Sound design: Shiwen Zhu, Guozhen Li
Sound mixing: Guozhen Li
Music: Chamberlain Zhang
International Sales: Lights On
Venue: Locarno Film Festival (Pardi di domani: Concorso internazionale)
In Chinese
20 minutes
