Chinese filmmaker Gu You’s films, modeled on Chinese landscape painting, won’t end with three.
The director of “The First Taste of Loneliness”, which had its world premiere in competition at the Busan International Film Festival, tells Diversity He said a fourth film is currently in research and development and may delve into the genre.
The new film tells the story of three generations of women who face loneliness for the first time after the death of their beloved fathers. Zhou Xun, Xi Meijuan and Wang Shengdi star in the lead roles. Losange Films is handling international sales for the China-France co-production produced by Hangzhou Shanshui Films with France’s Tandem Films. Tandem will also release it in France. Shan Zuolong and Du Kexin produced, and Gu wrote the script with Yang Yikun.
Gu, who was credited as Gu Xiaogang in the drama “Living in the Fuchun Mountains”, had dreamed of three films when he made his debut. In doing the latter, he says, he realized that “This is a topic that requires constant research; what the relationship between landscape and cinema really is. It’s very difficult, extraordinarily difficult.”
He says the next film may not be entirely artistic and may include elements of romance, road movie or thriller.
“Overall, even though I’ve completed three films, I feel like I’m just getting started; honestly, I’m just getting started,” Gu says. “I seem to have captured only a small part of the relationship between cinema and landscape.”
“Living in the Fuchun Mountains” premiered at Cannes Critics’ Week in 2019, becoming the first Chinese-language film to close the section. The sequel, “Residence at West Lake”, competed at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2023 and opened the Beijing International Film Festival the following year. Gu received the Kurosawa Akira Award, becoming the youngest person to receive this award.
“The First Taste of Loneliness” begins with a death in the family. Gu’s wife’s father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer shortly after the couple met, and he himself died a year after they married.
“Precisely because my wife was faced with the passing of her father, she was forced to consciously think about death and the meaning of life, which drew me into the same thought process,” Gu says.
The movie takes its name from the Teresa Teng song that plays towards the end.
“When one is young, loneliness can be about romance and love; then loneliness becomes about separation, life and death, just as it was after my husband lost his father,” he says.
A line in the movie says that every encounter with loneliness is the first step towards happiness. The film also draws on Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo, who compared human life to a wild swan landing on melting snow, its feet touching both snow and mud.
“Snow represents the good parts of life, while mud represents the loneliness, seemingly bad or unfortunate parts. Together, these make up life,” Gu says.
It also alludes to the Buddhist idea that adversity itself is enlightenment, and to the lotus flower, which has its roots in mud and blooms over clear water.
“Clear water seems good and mud seems bad, but they are neither inherently good nor bad; both are necessary elements that enable our lives to flourish with meaning,” he says.
Another part of the story follows widow Gui Zhi, played by Xi Meijuan, who begins a new relationship and the friction at home. Gu notes that China, like Japan and South Korea, is becoming an aging society, so this situation is common. Adult children’s reactions vary greatly, and their reactions may depend on whether it is the father or the mother who finds a new partner.
“Overall in China, this still depends on traditional sentiments and remains an issue that requires parents and children to take the time to communicate,” he says.
Gu wonders if the same is true in Korea. “For example, I watched Hong Sang-soo’s film ‘Claire’s Camera’, and in France this did not seem to be a problem at all. So Europeans who watch such a subject may find it a bit trivial or sentimental, but in fact in the East this subject remains relatively conservative at the moment.”
According to Gu, what binds the films together is primarily a matter of form. His long takes, which he likens to the opening of a scroll, come directly from landscape painting.
“This may not be very familiar to international audiences because traditional Chinese painting is a highly specialized art form; even domestic Chinese audiences may not fully grasp the relationship between landscape paintings and cinema,” he says.
The second connection is philosophical: The films use ancient Chinese thought to look at today’s questions of life, death, and loneliness. Gu’s hometown is located on the banks of the Fuchun River, where the eponymous painting of the first movie was painted more than 600 years ago. Looking back on that film’s treatment of time and space, he says: “I realized it wasn’t intentional; it just came naturally from living in a city like that, having an internal perspective on space and time.” The new movie is set in Hangzhou in Eastern China.
Gu and cinematographer Takimoto Mikiya established six rules before shooting, starting with the idea that each shot should work like a scene in a painting. The finished film has just over 50 shots. Many of the longer ones could have been stitched together digitally, but Gu chose to actually capture them.
“But if an audience watches this movie and I tell them a shot was done with CG, I feel like I’m cheating on them,” Gu says. “The raw power of the actors’ performances and the purity of the cinematography would immediately diminish.”
He uses AI for office tasks, calls it a useful tool, and believes new technology should be adopted in daily life. “It is precisely because we live in this age that we want to go back to the basic essence of cinema, to discover the basic language of the film. We want to tell the audience that this is captured in reality,” he says.
Casting presented its own problem. “Residence in the Fuchun Mountains” used non-professional actors who could blend into real locations without being noticed. Here, Gu played Zhou Xun and Xin Baiqing, whom Chinese audiences will immediately recognize.
For scenes shot in public spaces, including the hospital, the crew set up cameras well in advance and remotely. Some shots worked and many didn’t, and word spread quickly when bystanders noticed the stars. “So if an attempt failed, we had to rewrite the scene, change location, and shoot somewhere else entirely so that people wouldn’t know we were shooting. This is how we accomplished this seemingly impossible challenge while maintaining authentic realism,” he says.
He says he barely needs to redirect Zhou.
“Sitting there, I felt like I appreciated a master at work; he really is a master, especially in such long takes. We call it ‘acting without acting,'” Gu says. As he reviewed the footage again and again, it never caught him stepping out of character. “She looks like she’s living life, but she sensitively conveys every nuance of emotion required,” he says.
Busan will last until October 15th.
“Naturally, we are first looking forward to how audiences in Busan and around the world will receive this film, but personally, I am already looking forward to the next chapter,” says Gu.