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sputnik451
Reviews
You yi tian (2010)
One day we met, except it wasn't on the same day....
One day we met, except it wasn't on the same day. A dream, a soldier on a ferry tells a girl she was going to become his lover. A girl wanders in Taiwan, and met the soldier who probes within her dream, yet he was now a school student...
A film which entices utter melancholy through its emptiness...Its a truly rare gem. A film which transcends to the seldom realm of nothingness yet still capturing a fragment of familiarity in all of us, like a deja vu perhaps. Its airy, almost transparent in ambiance, which leaks the substantial reality and the dream-like state into a big mesh. The funny thing is, you give up trying to decipher the enigmatic mess after halfway and learn to just sit back and enjoy a beautiful piece of composition even with a baffled mind. It allows you to feel what you see then structure it, and thats the raw beauty of art-house cinema on an overall aspect. Its a film that you can't really put a critical mark upon it, because its a composition of emptiness; devoid from meaning, space, time and substance; yet it does this flawlessly. There's a beautifully warped nature about it; something almost ethereally claustrophobic and alienated in its stunning visual embodiment. Tranquil water, an empty ship,a quiet learning centre, the film execute its material with a stunning use of tone to stimulate an emotion, a memory a mood.
Aesthetics wise, its a commendable effort for a debutorial film. It took a lot of effort to pass the first 5 minutes without turning it off, yet after that i had no doubt it was the blue print of a great exemplar. Its not in any sense a perfect film, but it flawlessly struck every chord of the tune. If this is the director's first envisage i am waiting with great anticipation to see what he brings to follow such a rare masterpiece.