Guo Run – first-look review

In the light of Don­ald Trump and the Repub­li­can Party’s war on female bod­i­ly auton­o­my, this hushed dra­ma from Chi­nese film­mak­er Li Dong­mei sud­den­ly goes from being a worth­while film to a vital one. We meet Yu (Manx­u­an Li) in a state of zen chill, ner­vous and excit­ed at the prospect of giv­ing birth. Yet the embryo inside her is only the size of a bean, and so she has a moun­tain to climb before she’s cradling a full-term baby in her arms.

Yu lives in a bright, airy apart­ment in an unnamed Chi­nese city with her boyfriend, a wannabe tech bro who appears to be drilling down into his work to avoid hav­ing to deal with the respon­si­bil­i­ties of poten­tial father­hood. Rather than tend to Yu, he coils up on the floor and watch­es old Hol­ly­wood movies with noise-can­celling head­phones on. Rather than sit with her in the park, he climbs to the top of a pre­car­i­ous tree and hangs there like a melan­cholic chimpanzee.

Li’s film is ulti­mate­ly one about Yu los­ing her child via mis­car­riage, and it’s chill­ing to think now that there are cer­tain places in the world where this nat­ur­al – but hor­ri­ble and painful – anatom­i­cal mishap might be cause for inves­ti­ga­tion or, worse, pros­e­cu­tion. Yu’s jour­ney plays out with the min­i­mum of melo­dra­ma, and the fact that she has to pay a car­er to be with her for a gynae­co­log­i­cal med­ical pro­ce­dure sug­gests that she isn’t at all clear as to whether she should be feel­ing any kind of sad­ness. Through Yu’s body lan­guage, there’s a sense that she want­ed a child at one point, but then it remains ambigu­ous as to how she feels in the aftermath.

The film com­pris­es a series of long, slow takes, with its min­i­mal dia­logue large­ly intoned at the lev­el of a faint whis­per. Most of the action comes from Yu’s inter­ac­tions with her young niece, who seems intrigued by the notion of hav­ing a cousin, but is also authen­ti­cal­ly bru­tal in the ques­tions she pos­es to her aunt about the dan­gers of the birthing process. It is for a most part a strait-faced film, wist­ful and pen­sive in its out­look, but the niece does pro­vide a few moments of wel­come levity.

Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly speak­ing, there’s noth­ing here that feels par­tic­u­lar­ly new or inno­v­a­tive, but its inti­mate chron­i­cle of a mis­car­riage – from first signs of blood spot­ting to return­ing home from the hos­pi­tal in a daze – is both unique and nec­es­sary. Though the effi­cien­cy of the Chi­nese health sys­tem comes off very well in the film (it’s a work approved by the state cen­sor), there remains implic­it crit­i­cism of its almost mechan­i­cal nor­mal­i­sa­tion of what can be, for many prospec­tive par­ents, a har­row­ing and hope­less moment in their lives. 

The way that Yu deals with the sit­u­a­tion in such a detached and prac­ti­cal man­ner lends the film a haunt­ing qual­i­ty, one that depicts a sys­tem which is shorn of emo­tion and empa­thy. And the rev­e­la­tion of the title’s mean­ing adds a naked­ly mov­ing dimen­sion to the oth­er­wise mourn­ful proceedings.