Long Day’s Journey Into Night

Dir. Bi Gan. 2018. 140 mins. 3D DCP. In Mandarin with English subtitles. With Wei Tang, Jue Huang, Sylvia Chang, Hong-Chi Lee, Yongzhong Chen.Bi Gan follows up his knockout debut, كايلي بلوز, with a stylized, color-drunk noir about a lost soul (Jue Huang) on a quest to find a missing woman from his past (Wei Tang). Following leads across Guizhou province, he crosses paths with a series of colorful characters, among them a prickly hairdresser played by Taiwanese superstar Sylvia Chang. When the search leads him to a dingy movie theater, the film launches into an hour-long, gravity-defying 3D sequence that plunges its protagonist—and us—into a labyrinthine cityscape. “Magical. An honest-to-God, how’d-they-do-that enchantment. Ranks among the great poetic and technical achievements in recent cinema. A full-body swoon of a movie.” – Justin Chang, مرات لوس انجليس. A Kino Lorber release.