Review: In 'The Breaking Ice,' A Trio Comes Together For A Stretch Of Wild Abandon
Leaving something behind doesn't necessarily mean a sense of direction. This energetic uncertainty permeates writer-director Anthony Chen's thrillingly fast-paced film Break the Ice, about three disgruntled Chinese twenty-somethings who brave the cold northern environs to make quick and meaningful connections during a drunken weekend.
From the instability of snow to the hardness of a frozen river, water becomes a beautifully crafted metaphor in Chen's poignant, understated drama, set in a Chinese border region near North Korea that doesn't itself conform to any fixed identity. (And yes, you guessed it, boundaries are another active metaphor in the film.)
In the wintry foothills of the Yangji Mountains, guide Nana (Cho Dong Yu) escorts buses full of cheerful Chinese travelers to the region's traditional Korean villages, where costumed villagers perform ritual dances. Between happy conversations and shooing tourists away, Nana has a pensive look. she likes quiet smoke breaks, teasing without flinching at the cautious approaches of her kind, her handsome friend Xiao (Zhu Chuxiao), an employee of the restaurant where her colleagues eat. dinner
Nana's brief glimpse of charm and personal toughness attracts the attention of lonely Haofeng (Liu Haoran), a bank clerk who is in town from Shanghai for a wedding, which could lead to an even more drastic decision. (He routinely ignores phone calls from his mental health counselor.) Seeing an opportunity to distract himself from his thoughts, he joined Nana on tour. He then takes a liking to this character, wearing a jacket and glasses that stretch out like a homeless man in need, and invites him to party with him and Xiao for the weekend. Nana's cramped, dirty apartment becomes a place where everyone breaks down, and a nervous and uneasy bond develops between the two characters.
This Jules and Jim-esque romance, which includes cross-town motorcycle trips, impromptu adventures (see the Godard reference), and lots of nightclubbing, definitely has a subtle, New Reckless feel to it. And just when you expect jealousy to destroy that unity (we've been conditioned to these stories all our lives), Chen avoids it by implying that his characters are more interested in the rush of unity than the emotional pitfalls of confrontation. .
Yet Chen, a Singaporean who has made something of a theme out of unlikely connections between people outside their comfort zones (Rainy Season, last year's Drift), retains the vulnerabilities of his lost characters. Their efforts to find freedom are always tinged (save for Liu Jinping's clever cinematography) with an intangible frost-like sadness that each of them sees but knows will disappear when they move on to the next one. Poignant, reminiscent of the early days of ambient indie soundtracks, Kean Leon's haunting score is as ambiguous as its companion, desperate and sad.
Read more. The 10 best films we saw at Sundance.
Payment is a film that moves lyrically between states of being, avoiding the need to explain itself. Experience often works. You'd be surprised how nice it is to learn a bit about someone's past with a clever visual or a few cryptic sentences without feeling like we have to see the solution for the sake of a great story.
It's a joy to watch a film centered around her experience, as can be said of Choi's charming turn as a young woman who seeks evasiveness as a way to protect herself from what silence and brooding can bring. His co-stars also do a good job, but there's something about Choi's pulsating character that's closer to what Chen's looking for in "Icebreaker," a younger-generation angst that alternates between the poignant anxiety of running water and chills moments . . And it's hard
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
