The Shadowless Tower

Scenes do not begin or end in The Shadowless Tower so much as bleed and spill into each other, inviting you into a dreamscape where the boundary between fact and mirage is purposely blurry.

Zhang uses quiet to suggest an active calmness, so when a particular sound punctures the air — gurgling water, the music on a videotape, a child’s questions — it feels like the notes of life, the stuff that’s supposed to spark us.

This movie opens itself to you with its feeling for people, its grace notes and a few bravura moments that close the distance between characters beautifully.

As The Shadowless Tower ambles onward, it reveals its arcs of change not in dramatic showdowns or sudden revelations, but in ellipses, in the occasional mysterious fold in chronology and, most rewardingly, in the casual, unforced repetition of certain motifs.

The film’s delicacy of touch comes through not only in the bittersweet love story at its centre, but in a wealth of seemingly marginal details.

The characters’ generational angst humanizes the film’s view of a nation at a crossroads.

Chinese writer-director Zhang Lu’s minor-key drama will be too muted and elusive to break beyond festivals, but its melancholy spell stays with you.