‘My Friend An Delie’: Tokyo Review

Dir: Dong Zijian. China. 2024. 111mins

The dying of a father opens a door to the previous on this brooding drama from actor-turned-director Dong Zijian, who appeared in Jia Zhang-ke’s Mountains Could Depart and Ash Is Purest White, and likewise takes the title function right here. Travelling again to his hometown in northeastern China, Li Mo (Liu Haoran) spots a childhood pal, An Delie (Dong) – however An Delie claims to not recognise him. As the 2 males journey collectively by the snowbound wilderness, recollections of their childhood friendship begin to coalesce. Tailored from a novel by Shuang Xuetao, that is an completed first characteristic which, whereas it might deal with tightening up in locations, potently evokes the uncanny no man’s land of grief.

 A high quality manufacturing throughout the board

My Buddy An Delie shares a story gadget, if not the lightness of contact and humour, with Joanna Hogg’s The Everlasting Daughter. However in contrast to Hogg’s single-location exploration of the painful processing of a dying, Zijian’s image depends closely on flashbacks to the shared faculty days that hyperlink the 2 travellers. It’s a mix that feels just a little unwieldy, with the college sequences a extra standard factor that undermines the uneasy oddness of the present-day sequences, which unfold in an icily purgatorial backwater.

Nonetheless, it is a high quality manufacturing throughout the board – the good-looking cinematography, by Pema Tseden collaborator Lu Songye, is a specific stand out. The movie needs to be an attention grabbing proposition going ahead, each domestically and at additional festivals.

There’s a way of disquiet to the movie even earlier than Li Mo embarks on his journey to reconnect along with his previous. A sinuous monitoring shot reveals him operating within the night, an eerie pink gentle within the evening sky and the sensation of absolute stillness that comes earlier than a storm. The rating – one other high quality factor – combines just a few questioning woodwind notes with one thing inexorable, virtually mechanical, offering a rhythm as Li Mo jogs. Little or no occurs within the scene, and but there’s a transparent skin-prickling sensation of one thing amiss.

The darkness seeps into one other key sequence, the evening flight again to Shenyang. The cabin lights are dimmed and the faces of the 2 characters are framed in velvety shadows. Li Mo approaches An Delie, however not solely does his former pal not recognise him, he begins to cry. They lastly set up that they’re travelling to the identical funeral, that of Li Mo’s father. “I’ve a pal known as Li Mo,” says An Delie, “However you aren’t him.” When a snowstorm closes their vacation spot airport and they’re diverted to an alternate, the 2 males determine to journey collectively in a overwhelmed up rental car into the smooth, unhappy blue gentle of the winter.

The flashbacks are a putting tonal distinction, with a glance that feels virtually nostalgic in tone. There’s a honeyed heat to the color palette and – because the friendship between the 2 schoolboys is solid over a shared love of soccer – a weak point for generic childhood idyll signifiers like pictures of frolicking children in fields of swishing grasses. There are, nonetheless, additionally hints of shared struggling that unites the 2 kids. Li Mo’s browbeaten and upset mom leaves her husband and son to begin a brand new life. And An Delie lives with a father he despises, and has a mottled accumulation of bruises to point out for it.

The extra that we see of the previous, the extra we start to know how a lot Li Mo has blocked from his reminiscence. And seeds of doubt in regards to the current day scenes begin to take root. 

A late evening meal in abandoned lodge restaurant is framed with shrine-like symmetry. For a quick second, it appears that evidently An Delie remembers his pal in any case, in addition to different particulars from their childhood. “You bear in mind a lot from again then. I’ve forgotten most of them,” says Li Mo over pictures of spirits. “That’s good,” says An Delie, his face as soon as once more framed in darkness.”Forgetting is sweet. Overlook every part.”