Raw and intimate, Lou’s latest is a meta-filmic, time-travelling chronicle back to the COVID-19 pandemic as he reflects on the angst and helplessness of not being able to complete a film, yet it is also surprisingly an emotional work of gratitude.
Review #2,908
Dir. Lou Ye
2024 | China (Germany-Singapore co-production) | Drama | 105min | 1.85:1 | Mandarin
M18 (passed clean) for some mature content
Cast: Qin Hao, Mao Xiaorui, Qi Xi, Liang Ming, Huang Xuan
Plot: January 2020. A film crew reunites near Wuhan to resume the shooting of a film halted ten years earlier, only to share the unexpected challenges as cities are placed under lockdown.
Awards: Nom. for Golden Eye (Cannes); Won 2 Golden Horses – Best Narrative Feature & Best Director, & Nom. for 1 Golden Horse – Best Film Editing
International Sales: Coproduction Office
Accessibility Index
Subject Matter: Moderate – Filmmaking; COVID-19 Lockdown
Narrative Style: Slightly Complex
Pace: Slightly Slow
Audience Type: Slightly Arthouse
Viewed: Filmgarde Kallang (as part of the Singapore International Film Festival)
Spoilers: No
There is something in Lou Ye’s filmmaking that has continually attracted me for a long time. Since discovering Suzhou River (2000) a decade ago, I find his raw and intimate style markedly different from that of, say, his Sixth Generation compatriot Jia Zhangke.
A follow-up to his terrific and unconventional WWII espionage drama Saturday Fiction (2019), An Unfinished Film is that reflective pandemic film that is at once meta-filmic while also a time-travelling chronicle back to that seemingly distant past of quarantines, daily video calls and the sirens of ambulances wailing now and then in the empty streets.
On the pretext of finishing an incomplete film with queer undertones shot a decade ago, the director calls back his cast and crew for a quick rendezvous. We are in 4Q 2019, with the world oblivious to the fact that everything will turn bad very quickly in the months to come.
As COVID-19 irreversibly changed lives, filmmakers share a similar fate, stuck in a Groundhog Day-esque loop, unable to create art together—parallels between the virus and the ‘disease’ that is censorship can obviously be drawn.
“We better sit back and enjoy it here.”
Using his onscreen surrogates, Lou channels all his past angst and helplessness into An Unfinished Film, yet surprisingly, it is also a work of gratitude—for healthcare workers who risk their lives every day, for the solidarity of friendship in extremely trying times, and for the (virtual) presence of family that makes it worth living for.
It could easily be titled ‘An Unfinished Life’, defiant in humanity’s quest to survive, both physically and psychologically, this harrowing threat, and to continue living life the way we want to.
In some of the most emotional montages put together for a 2024 picture, Lou shows us phone recordings of footage from Wuhan residents who suffered the worst of the pandemic.
The director made a surprise appearance at the Singapore International Film Festival screening I was in, but I most remembered a lady who was sobbing uncontrollably beside me during those montages. There is a reason it won the Audience Award at the same festival.
Grade: A-
Trailer:
Eternality Tan 
[…] remind me somewhat of a similar approach that Lou Ye used in his empathetic Covid pandemic meta-film An Unfinished Film (2024), highlighting the raw human immediacy inherent in its form, as well as the seamlessness in […]
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[…] Ensemble Cast: AN UNFINISHED FILM. An empathetic pandemic meta-film that relies on the collective strength and perserverance of its […]
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