absence: SCREENING INTRODUCTION BY Jimmy Tianxiang Wang
ABSENCE
In 2021, Wu Lang's first short film Absence was nominated for Best Short Film at the 74th Cannes Film Festival and the 33rd Palm Springs International Film Festival, and won the Best Short Film Award at the 22nd Milan International Film Festival. Two years later, this short is expanded to a feature of the same name. As Wu Lang's feature debut, Absence premiered in the Encounters Section at the Berlinale International Film Festival 2023.
The story revolves around Han Jiangyu, who tries to reconnect with his previous life after serving a ten-year sentence. However, his ten-year absence has cast a sense of uncertainty and obscurity on the world he faces, because as the sweep of global capital has triggered rapid urbanisation in his hometown, everything is changing so fast. Han Jiangyu passively responds to the changes and uncertainties in his life.
Set in Hainan Island, the film’s engagement with the issues concerning the local real estate over-development enables it to contain a profound dimension of social observation compared with the original short film, which is inclined to pure aesthetic exploration. The very astonishing speed of urban development addressed in this film can be described in a line of dialogue by Kai's character, who is a young parvenu making his fortune on real estate development : "If the industrial revolution took hundreds of years in the West, it took only ten years in China." However, this film puts to the fore the negative consequences brought about by capital-driven urbanisation. Visualising the development process in the representation of urban space, the film not only points the camera to the skyscrapers erected in the city, but also highlights their juxtaposition with unfinished construction sites and urban ruins. The city, in the film, is depicted as an overdeveloped but rarely inhabited ghost town. Such a cityscape is in sharp contrast to the utopian vision idealised by the scale model and advertising image showcased in Kai's company, which outline what the apartment buildings and communities would be like in the future, and which are used to make promises to the consumers who dream of owning an apartment and living a peaceful life in the city. At this point, the film hints at a consumer-oriented contemporary Chinese society filled with symbols and ideologies that subtly guide people's desires, behaviours, and values towards consumption. As individuals at the bottom of society, Han Jiangyu and his re-united ex-lover Su Hong, who is pursuing to own an apartment in the city, were innocently involved in the consumer society manipulated by the invisible power of the state and capital. As the bankruptcy of Kai's real estate project turns their dream home into permanent ruins, the trajectory of their quest for an ideal home shifts, making Han Jiangyu and Su Hong enter into a state of exile. Thus, at the end part of the film, Wu Lang foregrounds their exile in a disordered urban dystopia paradoxically produced by capital which values order, and shows, in a poetic way, the two characters' exploration of a solution to their dilemma, a solution that is non-resistant, numb, and romantic, and dooms to be fruitless.
In terms of the subject matter and filmic style, the film owes itself to the avant-garde aesthetics developed from a trend of city-based filmmaking taking place in the field of Chinese-language cinema during the post-Cold War era. Beginning in the late 1980s, under the sweep of globalisation, both Taiwan and mainland China have undergone rapid urbanisation. As a consequence, a large number of films have emerged on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, responding to the drastic changes occurring in urban society. From the main contributors to the New Taiwanese Cinema, such as Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Edward Yang, and Tsai Ming-Liang, or the Sixth-generation directors in the mainland, including Lou Ye, Zhang Yuan, and Jia Zhangke, their films frequently address the urban upheaval of the time. Also, their films tend to examine urban society from alternative perspectives, often emphasising the estrangement of individuals from the drastic urban transition, and providing social comments and criticism. Even to the present day, unreasonable urban planning and excessive urban development are still problems that haunt the social reality in contemporary China. As a result, by taking us into the existential situation of those at the bottom who are passively and numbly under the influence of the change of the outside social environment, Absence builds up an in-depth dialogue with these social problems. Far beyond simply catering to the classic avant-garde aesthetics of its predecessors, Absence's slow rhythm, poetic and melancholy quality, restrained emotions, and sparse dialogue ultimately form Wu Lang's unique auteurship.
Epilogue on behalf of director Wu Lang: “Great, thanks to all for coming to support. Hope you can find a sense of peace from the film Xue Yun (Absence).”
Jimmy Tianxiang Wang, PhD Researcher, Huston School of Film and Digital Media, University of Galway. His research focuses on urban spaces in contemporary Chinese film.
1 April 2023