Review | Film review: Kaili Blues – Bi Gan’s art-house gem blends memories and time

4 stars

While the film even shares its Chinese title – Roadside Picnic – with the Russian sci-fi novel that Tarkovsky turned into 1979’s Stalker, it is hardly overwhelmed by those influences. Bi’s art-house gem – set around the city of Kaili, Bi’s birthplace in China’s southwest – is a narrative experiment which intuitively bridges social realism and magic realism to tell a story of great emotional resonance.

Identity is a fluid concept in Kaili Blues, which tentatively revolves around Chen Sheng (played by Chen Yongzhong), a miserable ex-con who works as a country doctor and moonlights as a poet. When it becomes obvious that his no-good half-brother has sold off his young son, Chen travels to the idyllic village of Dang Mai to rescue his nephew, only to find time and space all jumbled on the journey.

Possibly taking hints from “The Zone”, a sealed-off area in Stalker that allegedly fulfils people’s deepest wishes, Bi’s dreamy road movie confronts Chen with characters who might respectively be his deceased wife and grown-up nephew. In an inspired stroke, the mysterious time loop is captured in a 40-minute long take – shot on a hand-held camera – that plays like it has developed a consciousness of its own.