One of the most interesting and always fascinating components of the sub-genre of body horror is how the body can become a metaphor for something unspoken and/ or repressed. Many directors, most famously perhaps Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, have made a career of exploring how a certain feeling, an event or sensation can become a transformative experience, quite literally. Even though we as the audience might fear the change in a person’s body and eve find it abhorring up to the point when we turn our eyes away from the screen, ultimately, the emotions which laid the groundwork for the metamorphosis are easily accessible. In his short feature “Bubble”, which already competed in many festivals such as Palm Spring Short Fest 2021 and Sitges Film Festival 2020, Chinese director Haonan Wang explores the feeling of a couple meeting on an unusual date in a restaurant which leaves a lasting imprint on both of them.
Bubble is screening at Fantasia Film Festival
A man (Naughty Xiao) and a woman (Jing Jin) have been together for quite some time. The apartment they share has become a home to their affection for one another, expressed in small gestures. However, a simple question during dinner about how it feels, is the foundation for a great change in their relationship as the digestion of herbal plants in a restaurant (?) transforms the man into something else entirely.
One of the great aspects of Haonan’s short feature has to do with absence and silence. Apart from the aforementioned question, there is no dialogue between the two individuals, nor any other word is spoken for the whole duration of the film. While Wang maintains the abstract, yet ambivalent nature of the narrative and what is happening to the couple, you have to highlight not much needs to be explained or said because many features, for example, their affection for one another and their understanding for each other, indeed needs no further explanation. It seems merely that this meaningful connection between these two becomes something more, evolves in front of their eyes, a transition which contains many opportunities as well as risks.
While often labeled a horror film, “Bubble” is anything but, especially since its themes involve love and sacrifice, albeit in an extreme way. Wang’s viewer is absorbed in this familiar, yet strange world thanks not just to the performances of his actors and the use of CGI in the latter part of the feature, but mainly due to Bobo Lau‘s phenomenal sound design, that heightens the impression of something shifting within the relationship if the two characters and their surroundings.
In the end, “Bubble” is an impressive short feature dealing with love, self-sacrifice and how a relationship evolves over time. Haonan Wang directs a feature which is both strange and yet fascinating, and shows his talents for expressing complex issues through audiovisual metaphors.
