Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Chinese auteur Bi Gan’s sophomore feature is ponderous, self-indulgent, and opaque, but still an engrossing example of cinematic virtuosity. This modern film noir begins with world-weary protagonist Luo Hongwu (Huang Jue) ruminating about his unhappiness as he awakens in a seedy hotel room. Luo bemoans the emptiness of his life since he lost his girlfriend, the beautiful Wan Qiwen (Tang Wei). At his family’s restaurant he discovers a photo of Wan in the workings of a broken wall clock, with a telephone number written on the back. And this prompts him to search for her, introducing an hour-long tracking shot that starts in a theatre, moves into a series of tunnels where Luo encounters a boy (presumably a dead childhood friend) who challenges him to a ping-pong game as the price of escape, and continues by motorcycle and cable-car to an outdoor arena where he meets an abrasive young woman also played by Wei. Gan is obviously not interested in telling a conventional story, relying instead on mood and suggestion as he uses the noir template to ponder such themes as the illusory nature of time and the difficulty of discerning between reality, dream, and hallucination—all expressed through a deliberately fractured narrative. Long Day’s Journey Into Night represents a triumph of style over substance, but even viewers bewildered by the slow-moving story may still find its hypnotic spell to be irresistible. A strong optional purchase. (F. Swietek)