The Shad­ow­less Tow­er – first-look review

“Are you a good guy, or a bad guy?” asks Smi­ley (Wang Yiwen), the adorable young daugh­ter of Gu Wen­tong (Xin Baiqing), the mid­dle-aged divorcee at the cen­tre of Zhang Lü’s The Shad­ow­less Tow­er. A failed poet-turned-food crit­ic liv­ing in the cramped apart­ment he inher­it­ed from his moth­er, Gu’s life is in dis­ar­ray, which is prob­a­bly why his daugh­ter is cur­rent­ly being tak­en care of by his sis­ter Wen­hui (Li Qin­qin). He isn’t offend­ed by his daughter’s ques­tion though, after all, he’s been ask­ing it about his own father since he was five years-old.

Return­ing to the Berli­nale com­pe­ti­tion for the first time since his 2007 film Desert Dream, Zhang’s The Shad­ow­less Tow­er is a sur­pris­ing­ly deft and sen­si­tive tale about com­ing to terms with the ghosts of your past. It’s hard to pin­point the moment Gu’s life went down­hill, but it prob­a­bly has some­thing to do with his absent father, who was sent to a labour camp after being accused of molesta­tion; an event that cast a long shad­ow over Gu’s life. Mask­ing his pain with alco­hol, he spends his days review­ing restau­rants in the Xicheng Dis­trict of Bei­jing, along­side his spir­it­ed 25-year old pho­tog­ra­ph­er Ouyang Wen­hui (Huang Yao). Ouyang is a refresh­ing anti­dote to Gu’s phys­i­calised sad­ness, and the pair embark on a ten­ta­tive romance. How­ev­er, as the sto­ry unfolds it becomes clear she’s guard­ing some painful secrets of her own.

A per­fect­ly paced and intri­cate­ly struc­tured film, The Shad­ow­less Tow­er pulls off the intox­i­cat­ing trick of mak­ing the world feel small­er and more inti­mate than it first appears. Zhang com­mend­ably nev­er attempts to tug at the heart­strings, or manip­u­late his audi­ence, instead focus­ing on seem­ing­ly banal details — like the poet­ry of Lu Xun and the films of Shang­guan Yun­zhu – and the recur­rence of cer­tain motifs like earth­worms, red kites and ball­room dancing.

When Gu’s broth­er-in-law Li Ju (Wang Hong­wei) informs Gu that his father is still alive, and liv­ing in the coastal town of Bei­dai­he – reg­u­lar­ly cycling the 300 mile round-trip to Bei­jing to secret­ly see his fam­i­ly, Gu sud­den­ly begins to reeval­u­ate his role as both a father and as a son. It’s Ouyang who ulti­mate­ly helps Gu bridge the divide with his father, her actions insti­gat­ing their even­tu­al reunion, but as the film pro­gress­es her melan­choly comes to shape and steer the film as much as Gu’s, with the rev­e­la­tion that she once lived in Bei­dai­he adding an entire­ly new emo­tion­al con­fig­u­ra­tion to the film.

Unlike recent Chi­nese dra­mas such as’ Wang Xiaoshuai’s So Long, My Son, or Jia Zhangke’s Moun­tains May Depart, Zhang nev­er attempts to make this por­trait of indi­vid­ual depres­sion into a larg­er dra­ma about gen­er­a­tional divi­sions and the con­flict between tra­di­tion and moder­ni­ty. That said, all the ingre­di­ents are here, includ­ing a drunk­en school reunion which breaks out into a melan­cholic karaōke ren­di­tion of ​‘Bei­jing Wel­comes You’, a song orig­i­nal­ly com­posed for the 2008 Olympics.

Instead Zhang favours the ago­nis­ing inti­ma­cies of con­tem­po­rary life over big themes and nation­al metaphors, teas­ing minor-key emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal insights out of osten­si­bly mun­dane moments. A supreme­ly con­fi­dent piece of film-mak­ing, The Shad­ow­less Tow­er is a wist­ful dra­ma that sug­gests unlearn­ing your­self is just as impor­tant as know­ing yourself.