Mu Zi's parents' old apartment is still there. A bed, an abandoned chair, a window falling off its hinges – the remnants of a relationship that has moved on. Her father has started a new family, her mother has friends abroad; it seems like only Mu Zi cares about this place. In The Cloud in Her Room, she wanders several times through this static past. In her palpably personal debut film, Chinese filmmaker Zheng Lu Xinyuan follows her 22-year-old protagonist as she returns to Hangzhou, where she was born, for the New Year's celebration. She arranges to meet old friends, makes some new ones and visits her parents, with whom she is mostly on friendly terms. It's like she doesn't really fit in anywhere. Mu Zi is living in limbo: like the apartment, she has stopped, caught between past and future. Zheng Lu, who shot her film in black-and-white, underlines Mu Zi's alienation through directorial decisions that are at times daring. She combines handheld documentary footage, in which Mu Zi interviews people around her, with more distant camerawork. As a child of separated parents, born at the time of the one child policy and having grown up in a China where everything is changing at breakneck speed, Zheng Lu has made a melancholy, topical film about her generation and the society in which they are growing up. At the same time, it is a universal story about love, relationships, the impossibility of keeping these going and the loneliness this causes. (Source: IFFR) Edit Translation
- English
- 한국어
- magyar / magyar nyelv
- dansk
- Native Title: 她房间里的云
- Also Known As: Ta Fang Jian Li De Yun , Ta Fong Gaan Lei Di Wan , 她房間裡的雲
- Genres: Drama
Reviews
Not for philistines
Don't watch this film if you are a philistine (like me). Really, this film is only suitable for true arthouse cinephiles who can appreciate such a high form of art.../s. Jokes aside, this movie will probably only appeal to the 1% of people who can appreciate really "artsy fartsy" films. While my movie tastes lie in more "mainstream" film genres, I have watched (and enjoyed) plenty of arthouse films as well, but this film is just... not interesting, to put it plainly. It's set in present day China but shot in black and white, and the story isn't told in chronological order. None of these are bad things per se, it was just how it was all put together that resulted in a rather boring piece of work. And I'm sure that there are other black and white movies with non-linear narratives that manage to be entertaining. Nothing noteworthy seems to happen at all; if anything, it is more of a character study of a modern day Chinese woman drifting aimlessly through life. A documentary would have been more compelling (and educational).A good film to me is one that tells a story, one that entertains people and makes them feel something. And the only thing I felt while watching this film was total boredom, so in the eyes of a philistine, it has failed.
