NOWNESS

“The wind, one brilliant day, called to my soul with an odor of jasmine.” Last autumn, actress Tang Wei softly recited these lines in English while sitting beside director Ben Rivers on a fallen tree trunk in the outskirts of London. Together, they carefully searched for the poem's rhythm, as the wind rustled through the trees.

A woman travels from southern China to Turin, Italy, to see her husband. But an unexpected departure leaves her to find herself again, and to find cinema.

In a stifling mise en scène that leaves no room for spontaneity, affection or rebellion, father, mother and daughter perform their rigid roles. Each follows their own script, out of sync and devoid of actual interaction. Their evocative choreography reveals small neuroses, fractures in the façade.

A woman descends into a surreal odyssey of fragmented memories after waking with excruciating neck pain.