Every year, folks think they can predict the wiles and ways of festival juries, forgetting that the smallness of such groups often privileges idiosyncratic tastes and produces shocking results. A jury festival is not deferent to critical consensus, so looking at reviews to divine their decisions is a fool's errand. Moreover, there's a tendency to think only the presupposed big players will vie for plaudits. It isn't so, and, honestly, that's a good thing. For sure, there are those who'll cry about Amanda Seyfried or Emma Stone not taking the Volpi Cup for Best Actress, but I'm glad Xin Zhilei got the prize instead.
Having watched Cai Shangjun's The Sun Rises on Us All at TIFF, I can confirm she makes for a worthy champion...
As first scenes go, the one that opens The Sun Rises on Us All is a warning shot. It centers on Meyun, considered dispassionately from above, as she is getting an ultrasound exam. There is no heartbeat to the fetus, but the doctor says nothing else for she has more patients to see. No consolation, no explanation, compassion in absentia and only cold pragmatism in its place. Panic is evident in Meyun's eyes, but she's quickly shuffled out and made to wait for answers. As it happens, they found fibrosis, which, though benign, may complicate her attempts at pregnancy. Later, it becomes evident that this is the result of a past abortion she didn't want but was pressured into by her lover.
Describing this as bleak doesn't even start to touch on the bottomless pit of despondency Cai Shangjun is peering into, for this is just the beginning of what is to come. If you can't handle the heat get out of the kitchen, or the cinema as the case may be. Because Meyun is plagued by more than a body at war with itself, slowly steeping in a pot of guilt that's been boiling her alive for the better part of the last seven years. The parameters of such a feeling become evident over time, but on first impression, it's so palpable that it barely needs explanation. Only then, a ghost from the past comes back into her life and revelations unfold, unstoppable and merciless.
Whatever stability Meyun has found with her boyfriend, Qifeng, falls to pieces when she comes across Baoshu, freshly released from prison for a crime he did not commit. Once upon a time, he and Meyun were a couple, enjoying some kind of happiness which seems impossible in the cosmos of unmitigated misery that Cai conveys as the characters' present day. Then, one night, they ran over a man and left the scene in haste. Their victim died, and though Meyun was the one driving, Baoshu took the blame and the prison sentence that came with it. Always prone to look ahead and move forward, she tried to overcome the nagging weight of a guilty conscience, but it's been crushing her ever since.
Baoshu's return unleashes a reckoning within the wannabe mother, who feels responsible for all the misfortunes that have turned the ex-con's existence into more of a torment. The pain of a chronic illness and the years behind bars have made him bitter, so their first meetings vibrate with unresolved tension, pregnant pauses and a passive-aggressive current charging through even the most innocuous exchange. On the extreme end of things, he seems to want her hurt, dropping a flower pot from the balcony and nearly hitting her on the street. What's more, Baoshu is dying and deeply aware of how much power he holds over Meyun, testing its limits and crossing them with nary a second thought.
When, at last, there comes a violation neither can swallow without choking, things seem to turn around, suggesting a deeper, still thriving, connection between the two. In its most perverse readings, The Sun Rises on Us All may be seen as an exploration of emotional bondage in its plentiful polysemic possibilities. It comes to a point when these ruinous regrets don't seem like the roadblock stuck in the middle of these people's lives, but the glue that binds them together and beckons obscene fulfilment. There's no way around what happened, only through, only a surrender to the consuming darkness that roils inside the erstwhile paramours.
In other words, it's high melodrama played in a somber key that makes the whole sound like a funeral march unfolding on screen for two-plus hours. I wish I could say Cai finds a way out of the monotony that description implies, but that would be a lie. An expert at playing with the tenets of noir and neorealism in a contemporary Chinese setting, he falls victim to the misconception that pain is the same as profundity. Lacking in generosity, one might say that The Sun Rises on Us All has committed to being an exercise in punishing fictional people for their perceived sins, twisting the knife any way it can until we're all crying in communal catharsis.
Sadly, it mostly comes off as exploitation. The audiovisual idioms that articulate these dramas don't help lighten their leadenness, keeping faithful to hand-held camerawork and a humid sort of naturalism. Moments when the image is, quite literally, thrown off its axis offer some variation, but it's not enough. At best, the unpretentiousness of this approach sets the stage for an acting showcase that, against all odds, follows a path of restraint and understated agonies. The script may demand tears, yet the small ensemble of The Sun Rises on Us All reserves those extremes of demonstrative feeling for only a couple of points. For the most part, these figures slow and silently implode.
And although Zhang Songwen as Baoshu and Feng Shaofeng as Qifeng put forward strong work, this is the Xin Zhilei show through and through. More than anyone in the picture, she strives against the flattening of Meyun into a mere receptacle for pain and desolation, finding opportunities for modulation even in the darkest pits of her character arc. Moments at her work as a social media saleswoman comprise the showiest examples, requiring her to model cheap clothes while trying to cajole clients about their complaints. It's all about drawing a hollow smile that never reaches the eyes while, inside, everything is pushing you to scream out in frustration.
Nevertheless, the falsity of her skillful cheer provides some comfort to the viewer who's made to witness the extent of her private iniquities. Another sketch of a half-smile manifests much later, at the hospital, when Meyun comes clean about what really happened seven years ago. Pay attention to Xin's stabs at humorous self-deprecation, pushing and pulling from that sincere guilt that threatens to swallow the screen whole. There's richness to her depressive countenance, a serenity to her pain as seen in an afternoon sojourn to the park. Hers is a depth that the remaining film struggles to achieve and there's no greater proof than the story's denouement. Then, this year's Volpi Cup victor earns her prize, making sense of the insane like only a supreme sorceress of movie magics can. She's a miracle worker.
After premiering in competition at Venice, The Sun Shines on Us All screens at TIFF as part of the festival's Centrepiece section.