\u00a9Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival<\/p>\n
Twelve years after her first-feature film bends, the director <\/span>Flora Lau <\/b><\/a>brought at the <\/span>Sundance Film Festival – World Cinema Dramatic Competition – LUZ<\/a><\/b>, another psychological drama set in <\/span>Chongqing and Paris. The main story follows two completely different people: Wei (<\/span>Xiadong Guo<\/b><\/a>) is trying to reconnect with the daughter Fa (<\/span>Enxi Deng<\/b><\/a>) he abandoned years before, while Ren (<\/span>Sandrine Pinna<\/b><\/a>) is forced to come back to France because her stepmother Sabine (<\/span>Isabelle Huppert<\/b><\/a>) is sick. Which is the link between the man and the young woman? <\/span>LUZ<\/b>, a Virtual Reality game where people are chasing a mysterious deer with the power of showing the players the best path their lives should take.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Behind a mise-en-scene which mixes with an interesting perspective the vital chaos of an Asian metropolis, the austere elegance of the French capital and a virtual world that closely resembles our own, <\/span>Flora Lau<\/b> is primarily interested in talking about human struggle for meaningful connections. Her take on the matter is somewhat appealing, because the director shows that sometimes connecting through electronic devices can be alienating – like in the case of Wei and his daughter Fa\u00a0 – while\u00a0 on other occasions a random encounter can bring warmth and support to a human being. <\/span><\/p>\n The most powerful scenes in <\/span>LUZ<\/b> are in fact those in which Ren and Wei meet by chance on the rooftop of a building, bonding little by little, developing a silent but deep friendship that links them in the research for answers. Their brief, poetic relationship is in the end more effective than the father\/daughter and daughter\/stepmother happening in real life, definitely more rhetoric in their development. <\/span>Flora Lau<\/b> portrays characters that are well written but also a little conventional, she seems more focused on finding the atmosphere of the different scenes than the pathos of the situations. If you have <\/span>Isabelle Huppert <\/b>in front of the camera, you can be quite confident she is going to deliver nuanced and magnetic characters, and this happens of course with Sabine as well. Same result is obtained by Taiwanese actress <\/span>Sandrine Pinna<\/b>, capable of holding back Ren\u2019s pain in order to make it more emotional to the audience.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/ins>\n Connecting two stories and two different environments through virtual reality, <\/span>Flora Lau<\/b> has created a cinematic puzzle that works better on the visual aspect. <\/span>LUZ<\/b> is developed through a series of elegant, fascinating scenes that keep the viewers hooked to the story. And isn\u2019t just about the fictional game and its virtual world: the director is totally capable of using the different tones that Chongqing and Paris can offer in order to achieve an aesthetic contrast which makes the movie even more dazzling. Everything is then brought together in the virtual reality, where the rooftop setting delivers some moments that are both heartwarming and visually beautiful to watch. Lau shows a vast knowledge of world cinema, paying subtle but recognizable homages to masterpieces like <\/span>Paris, Texas<\/b> by <\/span>Wim Wenders<\/b>, several movies by <\/span>Wong Kar-Wai<\/b> and the <\/span>Blade Runner<\/b> saga by <\/span>Ridley Scott<\/b> and <\/span>Denis Villeneuve<\/b>. Those references though are not distracting at all, they don\u2019t pull away the audience from the beauty of the images or the grip of the story.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n LUZ<\/b> is a movie that talks about how difficult human connections can be in a world that seems to be more and more disconnected. <\/span>Flora Lau<\/b> puts the human being at the center of her movie: they are the core of the issue, and whatever form of connection they choose to use, real or virtual, they have to truly open up if they want to still feel alive, feel all the range of emotions, even the most painful.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Rate: C+<\/strong><\/p>\n If you liked the review, share your thoughts below.<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n Check out more of Adriano\u2019s articles.\u00a0<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n