TIFF Bell Lightbox New Release Film Review- Long Day's Journey Into Night

Director Gan Bi returns to his hometown of Kaili in the southwestern Chinese province of Guizhou to craft his second feature following Kaili Blues. Lou Hongwu (Huang Jue) is back in Kaili for his father's funeral. His family owns the Feng restaurant that he wants no part of only demanding that his mother's name stays. The first half of the film jumps back and forth between present day and the turn of the millennium when Lou had a heated relationship with Wan Quiwen (Tang Wei). Much of the early passages take on a dreamlike quality mixing memories of the past and attempts to pursue Wan Quiwen in the present. A secondary thread centres on Lou's friend Wildcat (Li Hongqi) who turns up dead in a mine shaft dispatched by local gangsters with whom Wan is also connected.

Neither the films English title taken from a play by Eugene O'Neill or its Chinese one that translates to Last Evenings On Earth a book of short stories from Robert Bolano has anything to do with the events unfolding on screen. The piece also has a recurring tale within the tale of a mysterious woman who is such a good storyteller that one cannot separate what is real from fantasy. The hook to the piece is the 59 minute one take sequence that occupies the back half of the film. Our protagonist announces the start of the 3D sequence by literally putting on a pair of glasses while seated then falling asleep in a movie theater.

Waking up Lou finds himself in a mine shaft where he meets a young teenage boy who might be a ghost or spiritual guide. The boy leads the lost dreamer to a zip-line fashioned swing that carries the Kaili native on a descent into an improvised town square featuring a pool hall and Karaoke stage fronted by benches and barrel fires. Running the billiards den is Wan Quiwen's double Kaizhen who Lou is immediately attracted, launching the sequence of the extra long take where the pair dance around each other at several checkpoints around the square.

Long Day's Journey Into Night is at its core a film about searching for and trying to recapture moments in time from your past. The mining town a symbol of the thankless pursuit and its effect as the decaying town is filled with rubble at every turn. The trance like first section will draw the viewer in with its non-linear style, dark shadows and elusive green clad femme fatale. The hour long 3D back half pays off the first with the camera steadily pacing the two leads as they roam from point to point around the makeshift square.

*** Out of 4.

Long Day's Journey Into Night | Gan Bi | China | 2019 | 140 Minutes.

Tags: Kaili, Karaoke, Pool Hall, Mine Shaft, Funeral, Restaurant, Prison Visit, 3D, Long Take.