Premiering at the Berlin International Film Festival, director Wu Lang’s Absence opens with a barrage of beautifully composed shots set on the Chinese island of Hainan. Really overwhelming, like is this guy going to be able to sustain this throughout the whole movie? He pumps the brakes at certain points, whether it’s a choice or a necessity, but it’s still all very impressive.
Hainan with its ferries, water, and ageing buildings tucked into whatever corners they will fit feels like the humid decaying Venice of Death in Venice. Except the promise of new construction runs through the area in the form of the skeletons of new, soon to be finished highrises.
That’s where Han Jiangyu (Lee Kang-Sheng) comes in. He returns to Hainan after ten years in prison. He gets back into his old life. He visits a hair salon to see a hairstylist (Li Meng) with a young daughter. Her name is Su Hong and they might have been lovers back in the day. The kid may or not be his. He’s eager to be the father but Su Hong isn’t all that enamored with him.
He returns to his old job too, assisting the shady real estate dealings of Kai (Ren Ke) who’s getting tons of deposits on pre-construction apartment units from regular folk like Su Hong. It’s unclear what Jiangyu’s tasks are. He’s not a heavy thumb breaker or anything. Jiangyu does this work, maybe because his options are few. He also does it despite Kai’s father being one of the main reasons he ended up in jail for ten years.
Jiangyu has quite a sad face. It’s paired visually early on with the buggy eyes of a lobster getting cooked by scalding water poured all over it in a precise method. It turns from dark blueish green to red as it cooks. Then we see the silhouettes of a herd of horned sheep. Also early in the film Jiangyu asks his boss if a lobster has a soul. He’s told no, the lobster is food, things that are food have no soul. Jiangyu will later find the sheep packed into the back of a truck. The owner of the sheep gives him a business card in case he ever wants to buy one.
Su Hong warms up to Jiangyu. Because she likes him or maybe her love is aided by her financial struggles and the legal benefits she would get from getting married to a Hainan local. Probably a bit of both. He is very kind and caring in many ways so it’s easy to imagine learning to love him. There’s a sex scene in a rundown shack on the beach. The only part of the act we see is Su Hong’s face through a dirty windowpane.
The final third of the film slows way down as they establish a unique form of domesticity. Kai disappears leaving Jiangyu without a job. More devastating, Su Hong and many others lose the money they deposited. Jiangyu and Su Hong are married now, and he is the father to her daughter even if the question of her parentage still hangs in the air. He filled that vacuum and they all strive to fill the frames of the construction projects abandoned by Kai. The little family of three tip toe along water pooled in the abandoned unfinished courtyards. They flash their lights at the tadpoles swimming and taking up the space. Jiangyu now tends to a flock of sheep in the vast empty spaces of the buildings.
The final meaning of the lobster soul talk never came into full view for me. But an interesting location, shot very lovingly, matched with moving performances from the actors was enough for me to have a good time. Wu Lang’s visual flair alone is worth the price of admission. Is Jiangyu just food like the lobster we watched get scalded? He’s thrown away in jail for the benefit of a rich man then tossed aside by the rich man’s son. He has a soul though, that’s for sure.
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