‘An Unfinished Film’ Review: This Pandemic Portrait of Moviemaking, Loss and Community Is Crushing

Cannes 2024: Lou Ye’s latest film is one of the few about the pandemic to get it right

"An Unfinished Film"
"An Unfinished Film"

Unless one is very lucky, when we all shuffle off this mortal coil, there will always be something left unfinished. Whether it is art we were hoping to make, experiences we never got to have or people we wanted to tell we loved one more time, death brings with it the reality we won’t get to do everything we wanted. We are united by how we all will leave something unfinished.

In “An Unfinished Film,” the latest from Chinese filmmaker Lou Ye, this feeling informs the process of making a movie and surviving a pandemic. The two are brought together when a 2020 production is disrupted by the initial outbreak, sending everyone into quarantine in a hotel where they are disconnected from their loved ones.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.