At the start of An Unfinished Film, a filmmaking group receives an old computer. We learn that the device hasn’t been used in ten years but it does come on, to cheers—and, fortuitously, a password isn’t required. A couple of files contained therein point to the existence of a film abandoned before completion. No points for guessing that this decade-old project has informed the new Lou Ye premiering as a Special Screening at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival.
We see glimpses of the old film. It is centred around two young men who fall in love. Somehow, the film was never completed. That needs to change, the director thinks, after watching a couple of sexually charged scenes. He begins to make plans to get it done.
Jiang (Qin Hao), one of the protagonists, is unconvinced. Older but still reasonably handsome, he asks why exactly this film has to be completed. It won’t get past the censors—a callback to Lou’s own, real problems with China’s film censorship proclivities. Everybody is older; he’s married and his wife is pregnant. Yet he agrees to the new plan. But there is a question hanging in the film’s ether: Where does this new fervor for an old project come from?
Neither Lou nor his stand-in, the fictional film director Xiaorui (Mao Xiaorui), answers that question. But as the film goes on, it seems as though there is really just one reason: the film will be completed because the director feels it should be.
This suggests a hint of artistic whimsy on the part of the director, both in the film within the film as well as in the existence of what Lou has filmed: a documentary with fictional elements and actual footage. In truth, An Unfinished Film comes across as a lengthy indulgence of a director’s generative power, which is close to creative power but not quite the same thing. You could say that Ye hasn’t quite created this film but rather has figured out how to generate it from that old footage (which appears to be one or several actual unfinished projects).
But an artist’s indulgence doesn’t preclude insights or even moving moments. In Ye’s telling, the planned second-half shoot is halted by the 2020 pandemic and Jiang becomes stuck in a hotel, from where he is forced to communicate with the crew, his wife, and their newborn by online means, as movement in China is restricted. What we then have is an account of the pandemic principally from the perspective of one actor in China. This part of the film could come with its own title: Shooting, Interrupted.
It contains some funny moments and at least one emotional passage in which husband and wife speak honestly and vulnerably, until one partner falls asleep on the phone. The world lived through the pandemic and An Unfinished Film brings back memories of that time—including one scene depicting a real mourning. This is the film’s one true value. It’s just a shame that audiences have to go through scenes that should be a third their length to get that value.
The lockdown across cities the world over was quite the inescapable slog; there’s no good reason for a film to replicate its worst feature.
Director, screenplay: Lou Ye
Screenplay: Yingli Ma
Cast: Qin Hao, Mao Xiaorui, Qi Xi, Huang Xuan, Ming Liang, Zhang Songwen
Cinematography: Jian Zeng
Editing: Jiaming Tian
Production design: Cheng Zhong
Production companies: Yingfilms PTE. LTD, Essential Filmproduktion
World sales: Coproduction Office
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Special Screenings)
In Chinese
106 minutes
