Steph asked me if I wanted to see this, screening at MIFF, and, as usual, I was happy to drift along. Follows (in the words of the festival guide blurb) a troubled anti-heroine through the upheavals of the recent history of Shanghai, from the 1940s through to today, and has a kind of wistful elusiveness that worked the trick on me. The early scenes paint a picture of Shanghai in nostalgic hues, all hazy soft edges and luscious bleeding colours Wong Kar-wai comes inevitably to mind), men in nice suits and women in pretty dresses, Western jazz music in the air, and they're my favourite - but the subsequent slide through successive epochs has the flavour of a whole (albeit composed of distinct parts), and it's involving despite the distanced way in which it is shot, given focus by the trajectory of Qiyao (played by an actress who's apparently a hugely successful pop star under the name 'Sammi') and her lifelong friends, Lili and Cheng (one of the best things about the film is the way the dynamic develops and shifts as between the three of them), along with the lovers with whom she becomes entangled, the nationalist powerbroker Officer Li, the rich man's sensitive son Ming, and the young drifter Kela.
It's about the people as much as it is about the city, and it's shot with a heavy focus on faces and bodies, and as far as the broader settings go, it virtually never moves beyond interiors - there are no panoramic city shots, only rooms filled with mirrors and the detritus of domestic and social life. (The look of the film is a real strength - it's uniformly gorgeously shot.) I found the melodrama rather overdone - I haven't seen so many tears and tantrums in a film for as long as I can recall - but the ending is quite affecting in its restraint. I'm not familiar with Shanghainese history, but the backdrop is the takeover of government by the Communist party and the various black market, nouveau capitalist and so on machinations that ensue, but all of it is only really sketched in, even when it's in the foreground as far as plot goes; moreover, the chronology of the events of the film itself is quite confusing and difficult to follow, which isn't helped by the film's tendency to make large leaps in its narrative without really filling in what has happened in between.
So a bit of a mixed response all up, especially once I try to make sense of it, but overall I definitely liked Everlasting Regret - somehow, it just has a feel to it which has caused it to linger.
