30 year old Guo Yixing was admitted to the Shaanxi Provincial Art School at the age of 14 to study film and television performance. She started working as an actor agent in Beijing at the age of 21 and was admitted to the Open University of Hong Kong at the age of 24. She majored in Chinese classical literature and obtained a master's degree in literature. She later started writing poems that were published in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and other places. “Mysterious Object at Noon”, which shares its title with Apichatpong Weerasethakul's feature debut, seems to embody all her capacities, in an experimental film that lingers between the drama and the documentary.
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The movie essentially comprises of a series of vignettes, occasionally interspersed with poetry lyrics on screen, which are connected by the documenting of a nomadic female poet, who has come to Luxi, a county in southeastern Yunnan Province, to shoot a documentary but ends up following the story of a man who has disappeared, while his parents are waiting for him to come home. The movie actually begins with a young man in boxers trying out clothes in front of a painting, before we see him at a table with a friend and another man, who talks to them about the financial opportunities countries like Myanmar present. A bit later, we see two men burning a corpse, essentially insinuating that the deceased is the man who has disappeared, in one of the most visually impressive scenes of the movie.
The film progresses in this fashion, with the poet documenting and interviewing various people, occasionally listening to their extended stories, thus highlighting both the area and its people, in a style that frequently functions as a tour guide. The amalgam works quite well here, with the talks being quite interesting, touching all aspects of life, including work, society, politics and a number of individual events, and the images, in their combination with the sound, being truly memorable on occasion. The fishing sequence, with the intense sound of animals (pigs slaughtered maybe) and the one with the man rowing on his boat on a river are the ones that will definitely stay in mind, with particularly the latter also exemplifying the excellent cinematography, that is evident, throughout the movie. The fact is also stressed by the different styles of shooting, as close ups, medium and long shots are implemented throughout with the same artistry, that also becomes evident in the framing.
At just over 50 minutes, the movie does not extend its welcome particularly, with the editing helping the most in that regard. However, some parts are definitely a bit too long, while the continuous use of the same music track can be annoying after a fashion.
Despite these issues, the trip “Mysterious Object at Noon” places its viewer in, is a rather enjoyable one, both for its beauty and as an introduction to the area and China in general.
