An Unfinished Film (2024) - film review

It's been five years. Have we all moved on?

Lou Ye returns with perhaps his least film-looking film, and very much one which also lives up to its title, An Unfinished Film (《一部未完成的电影》). The artificial documentary from the Chinese auteur has recently bagged the two top prizes at this year's Golden Horse Awards (金马奖) - best directing and best narrative feature (aka best picture). On top of those, it has also won viewers' hearts with the Audience Choice Award at the 35th edition of the Singapore International Film Festival (SGIFF).

Do you remember your first instance of being restricted due to COVID-19?

Lou Ye's film takes us on a journey through a perspective that perhaps not many among us experienced. The film follows a film crew who, upon reviving a decade-long idle computer, decides to continue shooting a half-done movie, only to be smacked with the ensuing COVID-19 outbreak and lockdown just when the movie is almost completed.

Still of Qin Hao (left) and Ma Xiaorui in An Unfinished Film

(Credits: Yingfilms, Essential Films, ZDF/Arte, Cinema Inutile, Teamfun International and Gold Rush Pictures)

While Lou Ye's presentation predominantly centers around the Chinese lived experience, in particular that of a film crew, the shock factor, disbelief and eventual prolonged sense of despair and helplessness are universal. Like the pandemic, or epidemic, itself, viewers are inexplicably tinged with ambiguity after the film ends. I for one wore a facemask walking into the screening, and left with it still worn. It has become more than a habit to me, I am entirely uncertain when I can resolutely stop wearing facemasks.

An Unfinished Film crushes typical narrative structures much like how communication patterns were messed up by lockdowns due to COVID-19 at the start of it all. Footages real and ficticious intertwine in the film; the film crew portrayed are themselves movie professionals Lou Ye works with. Audiences see one specific character's journey but the film is just as much a journal documenting the encounter by these individuals. To that end, it proves almost irrelevant to assess this film based on fixated metrics from the design aspects to the technical, or from the artistic side of things to the overall production merits.

Still of Ma Xiaorui (left) and Qin Hao in An Unfinished Film

(Credits: Yingfilms, Essential Films, ZDF/Arte, Cinema Inutile, Teamfun International and Gold Rush Pictures)

It is not a perfect film, it cannot be and it does not seek to be in any case. It is a harrowing re-living of one of our most traumatic times in recent memory. Maybe the realest of it all is that it wasn't totally pessimistic, and precisely the most human factor of the film was its characters', or our own, choices to make fun of each other and themselves, generating some fierce laughs. We were entertained, and we self-entertained, and we entertained. Sounds like what you went through during the initial months of the outbreak? Well, it speaks for the experience of watching this film (with an audience) in the cinema too.

Although I take this position with all movies, specifically for Lou Ye's An Unfinished Film, please watch it in the cinema with an audience. This is an unfinished film, but an utterly fully charged experience.

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五年过去了，我们过去了吗？

中国导演娄烨的最新作品《一部未完成的电影》（简称《一》）不久前在本届金马奖获得最佳导演及最佳剧情片两大殊荣，随后也在今年的新加坡国际电影节被封 “观众票选最佳影片”。

您是否还记得因2019新冠病毒而被困的情景呢？

娄烨导演的《一》应该不是我们大部分人能够轻易体会的视角。它跟随着一部电影的剧组，在重新打开一台十年之久的电脑后，再次燃起想要继续拍一部未完成的电影的斗志，而就在将杀青的时候迎来了2019新冠病毒的爆发，二度暂停电影的拍摄。

哪怕《一》的视角着重于中国同胞的经历，而且还是一部电影的剧组，受到2019新冠病毒爆发打击的我们所面对的彷徨、恐惧与无助，是全球人都感同身受的。这部电影成功重现了疫情带给我们的恐慌，以至于在电影完毕后，某些观众可能还会感到一点点失措。我本身是戴着口罩入场看电影的，离开时口罩也没摘下。说真的，我不知道什么时候我可以果断地不戴口罩。

《一》打破了电影的传统叙事方式，如同新冠疫情打破了我们与彼此沟通交流的方式一样。片中夹杂着许多真实的疫情中人们用手机记录的画面；片中出现的剧组也的确是娄烨导演合作的剧组人员们。当然，男主秦昊的戏份居多，但《一》却是记录了这个剧组一同共患难的经历。正因如此，这部电影似乎不适用于既定的电影审美框架。 

《一部未完成的电影》并不完美，也不可能完美，更不可能追求完美。它是一部血淋淋的提醒着我们曾度过的近年来最艰辛的经历之一的电影。它最真的地方也许是当我们被困的时候，苦中作乐又逗彼此笑的那些瞬间。我们自娱自乐，我们自娱娱人。这也囊括了这部电影在一间戏院里与人共赏的观影体验。 

虽然我会说每部电影都应该在戏院里观看，但娄烨导演的《一部未完成的电影》特别应该在一间戏院里，和满座的一群观众一起观看。这是一部未完成的电影，却是带给我们满满的回忆与感受。