Unmade in China

Unmade in China is nominally about filmmaking, but what Kofman and Barklow do well is to use their unusual position within the Chinese state machine to make a thinly veiled movie about politics.

It's a cautionary tale of sorts, but the story is so strange it is often not clear exactly what it's cautioning us against.

As Unmade In China gets more personal and less professional, it stops being a primer on filmmaking in a foreign environment with unfamiliar challenges, and becomes an onsite mouthpiece for a pouting, passive-aggressive filmmaker who desperately needs an outlet.

Not even its problematically touristic gaze is enough to derail the fascination of this absurd tale's many nightmarish twists and turns.

All of this could be very funny, but while the film does deliver some strong comic turns, far too much time is spent watching an inactive Kofman whining about his lot.

Gil Kofman has an interesting and funny story to tell in his documentary Unmade in China. Too bad he spends more time talking about himself than detailing his misadventures in Xiamen, China, population 3.67 million.

Slack storytelling (including snippets from a post-film Q. and A. session) and patchy filmmaking seal the unappealing deal.