by Nick Taylor
The variations of melancholy on display in Blue Sun Palace, ranging from everyday stressors to self-recriminating shame, to the profoundly dull ache of existing in the shadow of life-shattering upheavals, are an exquisite feat. Director Constance Tsang’s penchant for choreographing scenes in one shot allows her to parse the emotional gradations and inflections with a fine-toothed comb. Sometimes, she distills her character’s moods in a single static shot. At others, she has her camera pan back and forth across a conversation, as if it’s a silent but active participant. Her directorial choices always feel deliberate without being show-offy, even when teeing up another self-consciously beautiful image or logistically challenging camera movement...
Blue Sun Palace’s opening sequence, watching an older man and a young woman eating dinner in a bustling Queens restaurant, has the rich, compact mystery of a short story. We learn in no time flat what these people mean to each other, which steps being taken in their relationship are new, which ones are expected. It’s very quietly magical, a complete arc in only a few minutes, and Tsang does this over and over again as she shows us the lives of Didi (Haipeng Xu), Amy (Wu Ke-xi), and Chang (Lee Kang-sheng, noted BFF of Tsai Ming-liang). Who are they at work, or with people they care about? What risks are they willing to take? What are they hoping for in life, and how much faith do they have in themselves to make their dreams happen against the unknowable hand of fate?
At times, Blue Sun Palace impacted me more as a collection of individual scenes, roseate snapshots that add up to a very sad portfolio of cultural displacement and personal isolation. This diaphanous structure arguably serves Tsang’s themes, as three Chinese transplants living in Queens are forced to reassemble themselves as best they can after one of them is mortally wounded during a robbery. The formal rhythms don’t radically change in the second hour, but Blue Sun Palace is very much about trying to find meaning and purpose after a devastating loss, and the gorgeous cinematography or immersive sound design never aestheticizes the grasping emptiness of their isolation. Sometimes, the look and pacing struck me as too reminiscent of Tsai’s slow cinema for its own good, but Tsang’s admiration has clearly not limited her own creativity. Plus, we love a reason to think about Days. How fun is it that two of this category’s nominees are expanding on Tsai Ming-liang’s cinema? I say very fun.
Shot set-ups from hour one are weaponized when repeated in the second half. The camera itself is haunting the characters, whether it's underlining the different trajectories of a massage therapist’s appointments or demonstrating how one woman is being asked, in all ways, to fill the void left by her dead friend. Norm Li’s cinematography is essential to realizing Tsang’s vision, in concert with a detailed sound mix and restrained editing patterns, giving each space a grounding texture while providing necessary inflections to help us better grasp the inchoate or inexpressible feelings each character is grappling with.
So who would I vote for, you might be asking? Blue Sun Palace might be the most fully-realized film of the bunch, but My Father’s Shadow takes the biggest risks. I'd likely choose between those two films, though I’ll bet on Familiar Touch taking it in the end. Also, while I understand the different Gothams lineups are decided by committee so there’s more variety, I would very much like to know how East of Wall and Sorry, Baby leapfrogged over Breakthrough Director and went directly to Best Feature. But that’s more about confused speculation than anything else. the five nominees we have are superb, and the most important part is that more folks watch the films and celebrate them as soon as possible.
Blue Sun Palace is currently available on MUBI, and can be purchased or rented on most major platforms. It is nominated for the Best Breakthrough Director Gotham.