Critic Reviews

An illuminating look at a superpower in the throes of a burgeoning cultural catastrophe—and of a few of its myriad desperate-for-love men.

The Dating Game is sustained by the humanity that Du Feng finds in each of the individuals we come to know and understand a little better.

The colorful, almost exuberant surfaces of Violet Du Feng’s The Dating Game mask a grim, dystopian reality.

The Dating Game is inspired by a Chinese situation and Chinese protagonists, but the underlying principles Ms. Du Feng explores are global—being genuine, sincere, singular and not trying to tailor one’s personality to meet some very dubious standards.

A documentary whose strengths and weaknesses all too perfectly reflect the nature of the crisis at its core — a crisis that stems from a vast confluence of geopolitical issues, but expresses itself through the siloed misery of loneliness and longing.

The feature is awkwardly compressed in its portrait of heartache and easily overwhelmed by the political portent of its subject.

By the end, as they toast one another, there isn’t a sense that the men have gained any new insights on dating or love. Still, they’ve forged a camaraderie of loneliness. And while that moment is poignant and sad, in part for quietly underlining that Zhou, Li, and Wu, like so many men in China, are contending with a historic gender imbalance, this ultimately cynical film still sees them more as statistical examples than as individuals with inner lives.

The moments where these reluctant clients open up about their wholesome desires, their dreams of spending their lives with someone they can grow old appreciating, invigorate the unfocused film. The rest of the time is spent whirling around all the fascinating subtopics Feng brushes.