How Is Your Fish Today?

Pirandello comes to China with this story of an author and character in search of each other. Hui Rao (the film’s writer who plays a fictionalised version of himself) is a post-Tiananmen intellectual whose life has stagnated. He writes film scripts that will never be produced and he substitutes his cinephilia for real achievement in his life. His goldfish is called Belle du Jour and his bamboo plant rejoices in the name Fellini. On the basis that writers invent characters to explore the activities they can only imagine, our author creates a story within the story in which his protagonist, Lin Hao, is an outlaw on the run. Lin is constantly moving, forming a liaison with an enigmatic woman (played by the director Guo Xiaolu) as he traverses the whole of China from Guangdong to the village of Mohe, the northernmost place in China. There, he will see the Northern Lights, and fact and fiction will coalesce under their magical influence.

A thought-provoking inquiry into the uses and possibilities of narrative, as well as a work of uncommon beauty and delicacy in its own right.

Edinburgh International Film Festival