The film then rather loses its way in trying to suggest that Yiling might have somehow fallen under the spell of this flat, and may be less innocent than she appears. Though Yiling remains the film’s grounding presence, it is difficult to see how she connects in any way to this morbid fascination, beyond the rather trite idea that, as a vulnerable woman in a big city, she always has to keep an eye out for dangerous men. Even so, staring into the void quickly gets tiresome. They are just lonely men, and the often scary or disgusting monologues they deliver during their visits are just performances of a kind of masculinity they idolise but do not possess. This does seem to be partly the point: later, when a horrified Yao Yao finds out about the scheme, Yiling tells her that these men are pathetic losers who would never have the guts to do what Nielsen did. But the visits themselves, where Yiling, drawing inspiration from Jeanne Moreau’s look in Jean-Luc Godard’s Bande À Part – a harmless cinematic flourish – meets up with a variety of strange men in the flat, are underwhelming. It’s an intriguing concept, and Yiling’s stone-faced pragmatism is in turns chilling and moving, a symptom of her economic despair and lack of resources. Soon, she worries about how to pay the bills, however, and when she sees a colleague turn down yet another call from a man asking to visit Nilsen’s former flat, she quietly but quickly comes up with a money-making plan. The man who employed her, himself also Chinese, proves less friendly than he first appeared, and the only time Yiling appears relaxed is in the small flat she shares with Yao Yao. Early on in the film, Yiling takes up her new job in the real-estate office to work as a secretary – a real step up from her previous restaurant job – but soon faces rejection and embarrassment because of her co-workers. Kapelinski’s work on dead-space compositions, the shadows and darkness in Marcin Koszalka’s cinematography, and the muted performances from Tao and Lin Xinyao in the role of Yiling’s younger cousin, Yao Yao, expertly underline a sense of profound solitude and impossible communication.
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