The Break­ing Ice – first-look review

Sin­ga­pore­an direc­tor, Antho­ny Chen, is known for human dra­mas that pull off their mod­est nar­ra­tive ambi­tions with heart-on-sleeve sin­cer­i­ty. His pan­dem­ic project, The Break­ing Ice, is loy­al to its title in every way. It con­tains dif­fer­ent iter­a­tions of ice lit­er­al­ly break­ing (a char­ac­ter chomp­ing on ice cubes, hack­ing up ice blocks with tools, and ice-skat­ing) as well as the even­tu­al cathar­sis of its metaphor­i­cal mean­ing as frozen hearts thaw out by the fire of brief-yet-mean­ing­ful friendship.

In the lim­bo land of Yan­ji, a win­try Chi­nese city that bor­ders on Korea with a large Kore­an pop­u­la­tion, three twen­ty some­things with dif­fer­ent demons are on hia­tus­es from their lives. Haofeng (Liu Hao­ran), is an intro­vert­ed financier from Shang­hai who fan­ta­sis­es about sui­cide. He has come to Yan­ji for a wed­ding. Nana (Zhou Dongyu) is a charm­ing but pre­oc­cu­pied tour guide who ush­ers Haofeng under her wing after he los­es his phone on one of her tours. Xiao (Qu Chux­i­ao) is a local restau­rant work­er with a crush on Nana. He shows Her­culean restraint when a strange third wheel, Haofeng, is invit­ed on a night out.

This night out proves to be very boozy, cul­mi­nat­ing in the usu­al­ly cringy after-hours clas­sic – some­body pulling out a gui­tar – that, in this case, leads to an emo­tion­al reprieve. Haofeng over­sleeps the next morn­ing, miss­ing his flight home. Nana sug­gests that he make a virtue of this sna­fu and invites him to stay with her for the next few days.

Chen uses this con­tained time peri­od to map out nat­u­ral­is­ti­cal­ly paced bond­ing with pro­found impli­ca­tions for each mem­ber of the trio, using the edge-of-the-world remote­ness of Yan­ji as a dreamy icescape in which fall­en peo­ple can refind their foot­ing. Reward posters and news footage reg­u­lar­ly report on a fugi­tive from Korea who had tak­en to shoplift­ing to sur­vive. He is an apoc­ryphal pres­ence, adding exter­nal stakes that nev­er come into focus.

As their bound­aries gen­tly melt away, Nana and Haofeng enjoy sweet sex­u­al heal­ing, to a sto­ical response from Xiao. The film comes into its own when Chen leans into the juici­est poten­tial of its ambigu­ous three­way dynam­ic. This is Jules et Jim for the sea­son­al­ly depressed, full of emo­tion­al nooks and cran­nies that are exca­vat­ed as the three actors let the push and pull between what is com­mu­ni­ca­ble and what must be suf­fered alone flick­er across their faces.

Zhou Dongyu as Nana is the MVP, lay­er­ing her per­for­mance so that the cheer­ful mis­tress-of-cer­e­monies front abrupt­ly runs out and she laps­es into brood­ing. Even in this state, she is ani­mat­ed by a live­ly phys­i­cal intel­li­gence that express­es itself in car­ing ges­tures. For the most part, she rebuffs XIao with scathing wit, yet there comes a moment where she cre­ates a new genre of kiss: one that says ​“I’m sor­ry this doesn’t mean some­thing else.”

With Haofeng, as he show­ers, she traces the line of his body through the cur­tain until their hands are touch­ing through the fab­ric. This is goodbye.