In “Luz,” writer-director Flora Lau immerses viewers within the mystical world of a simulated actuality recreation of the identical identify. Set in Chongqing, considered one of China’s largest cities, the movie follows Ren (Sandrine Pinna), a gallerist who travels to Paris to go to her stepmother, Sabine (Isabelle Huppert). Sabine, lengthy divorced from Ren’s father — a profitable painter — has not too long ago skilled fainting spells which have landed her within the hospital. Regardless of her severe well being points, she takes a laissez-faire strategy, focusing as an alternative on launching her new gallery. On the identical time there’s a parallel intervention taking place as Wei (performed by Xiao Dong Guo), a conman who does soiled work for a rich businessman, spends his off-hours watching his estranged daughter, Fa (En Xi Deng), livestream her house life on a social networking app the place followers like him bathe her with consideration and money. For a lot of the film, the tales of Ren and Sabine and Wei and Fa appear completely disconnected, however finally they intersect inside the digital actuality surroundings of Luz. This simulated world turns into a playground for his or her shared “flower mild journey” (huā míng dù in Mandarin), the place gamers traverse an ethereal forest on a quest to hunt a deer with pores and skin so iridescent it seems like a psychedelic hallucination.
“Luz” is keenly within the interaction between so-called actual life and the digital one which captivates its ensemble and devotes a lot of its cinematic vitality to executing this multi-dimensional idea. Lau deserves credit score for her inventiveness, shaping one thing as genre-defying as digital actuality right into a quiet, globe-trotting drama. Nonetheless, the movie in the end feels extra like an underdeveloped proof of idea than a totally realized narrative. Digital actuality video games are designed to be 3D experiences for a motive. Because the ensemble turns into more and more drawn into the sport and the digital world takes up extra space of their lives, the confines of a two-dimensional body undercut the multi-dimensional potential of her idea. One nearly needs this have been a movie designed to be skilled by VR itself.
Visually, the movie is lush, with coloration palettes of vivid pink and blue and pink and inexperienced that mirrors the expertise of strolling by Chongqing’s towering cityscape at evening. The mise-en-scène elevates Chongqing to the position of a personality in its personal proper, bringing each literal and figurative coloration to the story. As an example, scenes of Wei and his pal swimming in a river, with skyscrapers — and smog — looming giant within the background, present a fluidity to the real-world that contrasts properly with the heaviness of the simulated one.
Cinematically, Luz is greater than only a recreation; it features because the structural backbone and psyche of the movie. It’s an area the place Ren, Wei, and finally Sabine and Fa confront the issues they will’t face in actual life. Ren, for instance, is introverted and considerably remoted as she performs the sport from her sofa alone in her condominium. Inside Luz, nevertheless, she transforms right into a fierce warrior, relentless in her hunt for the deer. Wei additionally embodies a stark duality. Within the waking world, he’s thick-skinned and emotionally guarded, however in Luz, he radiates a childlike innocence and lightheartedness that hardly ever surfaces in his on a regular basis life.
Whereas the digital actuality world is an ingenious framework for a movie, it additionally dilutes the emotional resonance of the story. The heightened blurring between the digital and actual worlds creates a way of disorientation, leaving viewers uncertain of what’s actual and what’s fabricated. That’s not essentially a nasty factor, however this ambiguity, although conceptually intriguing, introduces an emotional distance that even the regular performances of Huppert (Sabine) and Xiao Dong Guo (Wei) can not absolutely bridge. Because the movie progresses, the road between Luz and actuality turns into more and more indiscernible, making it tougher to interact with the arc of the characters.
Towards the top of the movie, Lau tries to weave collectively the tales of Ren, Sabine, Wei, and Fa in the true world by a portray. This canvas, created by Ren’s father, depicts a sea of reds, blues, and small white dots forming a nest round a wounded deer in repose, its dreamy eyes daring viewers to look deeper. Displayed prominently within the membership the place Wei works, it’s apparent that the portray is gorgeous and alive, however very like the affect of Luz as a storytelling system, this doesn’t translate into one thing cathartic inside the movie itself. However by now one realizes that “Luz” is basically an mental train that raises extra questions than it but is aware of methods to reply: Is digital actuality actual or pretend? Are the occasions inside the recreation of Luz genuine? Does it even matter? Finally “Luz” features as a dynamic house for processing the digital and the way it pushes us to redefine actuality. Sadly, it lacks a beating coronary heart that might endear us to its cleverness.
Grade: C+
“Luz” world premiered within the World Cinema Dramatic Competitors on the 2025 Sundance Movie Pageant. It’s at the moment searching for U.S. distribution.
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