Lost Indulgence / Mi Guo (China, 2008)

Lost Indulgence is a remarkable story about loss and love near the Yangtze river. Due to a bizarre incident, a young woman with a broken leg goes to live with a mother and her son. The story is focussed on the contacts between these persons.

This is a film what could be describes as ‘poetic realism’. And I think this term is a right one because indeed the film sometimes feels like a long poem. The story and film is also rather realistic. No huge action scenes or mayor plot twists. Still, the director manages to pull us close to the live of the characters. I think the director did a great job in achieving this. There is not too much music in the movie, and when there is, it is a kind of minimalistic one (except the pop song ofcourse). The camera work is often great, especially when the boy runs with his diving glasses on and the scene is shot in this perspective.

Though not too many things happen in this movie, the film never gets boring. This is also part of the fact that the film breathes a kind of mystery. A very interesting production!