SFIFF Dispatch. 3.

Xiaolu Guo, now a resident of the UK, is a graduate of the Beijing Film Academy and author of eight novels; her film work to date has been in the documentary world, and for her debut feature she only partially makes the leap. How is Your Fish Today? [site] is a hybrid of documentary and fiction and stars the film's real screenwriter Hui Rao as himself, a Beijing scribe struggling to rewrite a rejected script. He narrates the film while telling not just his own but the story of his alter ego Lin Hao, whose story also resembles his own.

Still with me? The mix of his story and the "real" story, seamlessly (if sometimes confusingly) blended, may remind some of Wong Kar-Wai's 2046, but that film is a much more stylized and complicated concoction. How is Your Fish is an odd narrative in which the writer informs us of his needs and rationales to move the story forward. In this case, his character Lin Hao shares his desire to visit the town of Mohe in the cold of far northern China. Lin is also on the run, while the real screenwriter simply desires an escape from the banality of his life, to a place where one can see the Northern Lights (which is also the name of his screenplay within the film).

"I don't want Lin Hao to get stuck in this city," the writer says poignantly. "I want him to do the things I am not doing with my life." When the real writer finally gets there, he discovers the place to be not what he'd expected, but the barren landscape provides a welcome comfort from the bustle of Beijing. The film spends a good deal of time with more documentary-like moments in Lin Hao's life - milling about train stations, connecting with a woman traveler, mahjong games - as well as similar scenes in his created story until, movingly, they merge near the end, in Mohe.

Fish can be meditative, sometimes too much so - the reliance on voice-over narration makes sense in that the film is entirely from his head, his point of view, and is novelistic in its approach, but this can be wearying, making it slow-going at times and distancing us from the unfolding story. But voice-over also gives more opportunity for the director's own reflections of China's growing pains as a modern "democratic" industrialized nation.

The film becomes particularly interesting as we near the Beijing Olympics. What sort of country is this now, politically? Hui Rao ponders over the changes he's seen in the country and in Beijing in particular; and he ponders over his feelings of alienation. In a more shocking moment, when the character Lin Hao meets and falls for a quiet woman while traveling, they're separated after she's reported to the police - for sleeping around. And the director herself runs into censorship problems when filming interviews on a train to Mohe; despite having received permission from the train conductor, she has to stop. But the film is not a screed; rather, it's a rumination on issues of immediate concern and on the idea of progress and what may be sacrificed in exchange.

The composition and cinematography of the film are extraordinary, with Matt Scott's haunting score (shades of Philip Glass) further enhancing the mood.

There is something both challenging and (haunting) about this film that stays with you after the lights come up, which is about as hard to translate into words as it is to translate Mandarin to English. While it isn't always consistently compelling, it also needs a second viewing to fully absorb. The awkward title, by the way, refers to the pet fish the screenwriter buys to keep him company in his apartment, a large red creature he names Belle du Jour - one of many cinema references he makes.

Posted by dwhudson at May 4, 2007 8:52 AM