Lou Ye‘s docufiction hybrid “Unfinished Film” is one of the best films made about life during pandemic, even though it wasn’t originally planned to be that. It was the new circumstances that forced Ye to change his plans, when he and his crew were caught in the lockdown in a place near Wuhan to make a completely different kind of movie. What came out of it is a captivating act of genius which captures the exact moment when normality got squashed by the unpredictable chain of events: first the pandemic, and then a complete lockdown. Shot by multiple cameras, “Unfinished Film” is a movie within a movie, showing people in front and behind the camera, each absorbed in their own line of duty. But the actors and crew members are also caught off-guard, and at one point even Ye himself uexpectedly appears on screen, doing his directing job. In the movie, it is another director who is in charge of the shooting – Xiarou (Mao Xiaoru), a man who convinces his cast and crew to resume the shooting of a film that they couldn’t finalize ten years prior. Very close to completion of the shooting, one of the crew members falls ill and is sent home. Soon enough, the news about a fast-spreading virus is everywhere and before Xiaoru even has the time to decide whether the film should be put to a halt again or to continue shooting it, a complete lockdown is introduced.
“An Unfinished Film“, screened in the Official Selection Special Screening program of Cannes film festival, and it’s Ye’s fourth film here, after “Purple Butterfly” (2006), “Spring Fever” (2009) and “Mystery” (2012) . It would actually be the fifth if it weren’t for the withdrawal of his “Summer Palace” from the Official Competition in 2006, because it wasn’t approved by the Chinese censors.
Aisan Movie Pulse sat down for a talk with the Chinese helmer right before the world premiere of the movie.
Do you feel bad about all the films that you couldn’t make?
For me, a film that isn’t finished isn’t really a bad thing, which means that there will always be plenty of possibilities to do something whíth what I’ve got.
Last year, a very interesting documentary by Cyril Aris had its premiere about the impossible conditions under which the Lebanese director Mounia Akl, shot her feature film “Costa Brava” that won Audience Award in Venice in 2021. Aris also couldn’t have planned to make his documentary, because it was impossible to predict a catastrophe. I wanted to ask you about the importance of flexibility and adjusting to the moment. How is it to be working under such conditions when you suddenly have to turn everything upside down?
Oh absolutely, because initially, I had a completely different movie in mind. But suddenly the pandemic came. As you said, everything was turned upside down. I had to change my way of working and I wanted to record practically everything, especially because I had nothing else to do.
Pandemic has broken off many relationships and marriages, and you were trapped as a big crew of filmmakers in that one limited space. Was filmmaking a kind of therapy for you to go through the lockdown to stay sane, so to speak?
Actually, when the pandemic came, it interrupted and disturbed everything. I even had to make a completely different movie instead of the one that I wanted to. So, that was none of the therapy. I was obliged to change plans and take a different direction.
Your films are always about crisis in a way, and the pandemic is creating a crisis. Wei Sjujun’s “Ripples of Life” that screened here in Cannes in 2021 was about a film crew who comes to a small town in southern China for the pre-production of a film, but faces unexpected circumstances. The difference between your “Unfinished Film” and “Ripples of Life” is that while in the latter, there is a sense of hope, your story is steered by crisis.
That was a matter of moment, specific conditions, and going with them. I think that, in a sense, filmmakers are always in crisis. But here we faced them. And it’s not like that I am the only one stressed by things – the other directors are going through the same process. So, it’s not like that only my film speaks about such conditions. I used the camera to catch the crisis. That was my target and my purpose. Basically, it’s that simple.
Most of your films were cursed in a way: censorship, shotting ban, and then – the pandemic. Do you think that you still know how it feels like not having some trouble messing up with your plans?
Well, I had Gong Li playing in my “Saturday Fiction” (2019), so that went pretty smooth! So at least I had that one which wasn’t difficult to pull off.
Now that you mentioned “Saturday Fiction”, the movie was beautifully shot with a deep black-and-white cinematography, and a lot of creativity. In “The Unfinished Film” you had to improvise and use different kind of footage from diverse sources shot by different type of medias. Do you enjoy working in this more spontaneous format compared to the, let’s say, grand cinema dramatic project that was “Saturday Fiction”?
Not really, but today we are surrounded by the social media. It is everywhere. Just like my film, it’s part of our reality. Even the so called anti-movies have become accepted as movies and we are past the time to be questioning that. It is the way it is, and the footage shot by mobile phones have become a constituent part of movie-making.
Does that mean that making an unfinished film has changed your own perspective of who you are as a filmmaker, and how you work?
It definitely has. For instance, when we needed to communicate with other crew members, we could do it only over zoom or other apps. There was no physical communication which was the case during the complete shooting period.
(Jokingly) Do you think that your next film will be finished?
I will do my best! (laughs). But, I do normally use a lot of unfinished footage, just like for instance from “Spring Fever” (2009). There were some subplots that were cut out and I will try to use them in another project.
At the opening of Quinzaine des Realisateurs where she was presented with the Gold Coach Award, Andrea Arnold was telling how she burst in tears during the editing of “Bird” (official competition this year). which I guess is a very difficult part of the filmmaking process. Knowing that you used multiple cameras and that you had a lot of footage for “An Unfinished Film”, how was it for you?
I kept everything that was edited out for my next movies, which is what I almost always do. In “An Unfinished Film” you could see the material that I captured 10 years ago with the same actors when they were very young. For me it is very interesting to compare how they look and their acting from the past and the now.
How was it to portray the pandemic, knowing that it was a very specific momentum in China? On the one hand, the film is very universall because it gives a lot of comfort to people all across the world who have lived through the similar. On the other, when Covid reached Europe, it was already a global phenomena, and not isolated.
I was trying to catch every detail, every situation – the most silly and ridiculous ones, but also the happy moments. I recorded them all. I had the feeling that the whole world was changing, or like the French say: simply too much. I was scared of losing my job, because as a film director, I thought that I won’t be able to make movies. I was scared of the prospect that there will be no movies and no more film industry. That was scary.
Now, after four years since we were hit by the crisis, I am thinking that we are lucky because cinema is coming back, little by little.
We return to the cinemas, but it’s interesting that the pandemic has also changed the whole perception of what cinema is. Can you comment a bit on it?
A the beginning of the pandemic, not only the filmmakers, but everybody else was thinking that cinema was not important regarding what was happening. At the same time, I tried to recall the whole process in my latest film. That’s the change. I think that Covid was testing the endurance of cinema, and after four years, we could say that it wss still here. That is a huge comfort. I discovered my own tolerance during those years, and also that I could accept different forms of cinematic expression: the anti-film, the trends… Anything goes.
Some people in “An Unfinished Movie” are literally themselves. Other people portray a version of themselves. It is a hybrid between reconstruction and reality. I had to think about how certain things would fit in because it was very difficult to find the right balance.
The production is very special. We have a team that is shooting a film, and we have another team that is shooting those who are shooting the movie.
Sounds very complicated.
The shooting was also really special because we had several cameras. We were trying to record the process of the whole film, how it was made, how it was shot. At the end we had two footages and had to combine them in the editing process. Figuring out those layers was quite difficult.
For me, every movie is something unfinished because you are filming just a short part of life during one specific period of time. But before and after, life is still going on.
There are some very touching moments in the film that left no eye dry. The audience became quite emotional. Do you think that this is the case because you also used footage made by other people who expressed their genuine reactions in videos posted publicly?
Yes. Back then, there was some material on the internet that has disappeared in the meantime. We also had our own shooting material done by the members of the crew. At that time, it was really something that was happening to everyone. I think that this was something very special. We were shooting a story while it was still happening. For me, this is a first-timer.
