Listening to the Wind
风过耳
China, 2025, colour, 2:1, 156 mins.
Director: Peng Tao 彭韬.
Rating: 6/10.
A blind widower, his female carer and a younger man interact in interesting, if over-extended, ways in this voyage of discovery for the audience.
STORY
Chongqing, central China, summer. Blind widower He (Yao Anlian) lives alone but is looked after by a carer, Chen Huiying (Cao Xiwen), who also works in a bottling plant. He has been waiting years for a cornea transplant, and by now has virtually given up, despite Chen Huiying’s encouragement. One day, while she’s washing him, he makes a vague approach to her to move in with him – which she rejects – and later presses some money onto her to buy some nice-looking clothes while she’s “still young”. One of He’s few social activities is attending film showings for the blind, where the on-screen action is described by a narrator (Qin Junzhe); his longtime friend, Zhao (Yin Yuanzhang), a masseur, also attends them. Recently, a young man has been wandering silently through the city, briefly turning up at He’s flat without him realising and befriending a painter (Li Wake) daubing abstract patterns on the walls of a condemned building. The young man, who’s returned to the city after many years in prison, doesn’t want his arrival to be known. One day he’s waiting in Chen Huiying’s flat when she returns: he is her onetime partner He Daming (Wang Yanjiang), who first met her after she’d divorced; he is also He’s son, by his first wife, but He cut off contact with him years ago after he was imprisoned. He Daming says he still misses his younger step-brother, He’s son by his second wife; and one evening, while out walking with Chen Huiying, he complains of feeling tired. Meanwhile, Chen Huiying visits her workmate Tang Yu (Liu Ye), who has just given birth to a daughter. Tang Yu confesses that her partner, the father of the child, is still away on business and she suspects he may actually have left her. Then He hears from an old friend, Tian Guoqing (Zhu Zhongchun), that Chen Huiying won’t be visiting him for a while but has passed on a message that he can now have a cornea transplant. Chen Huiying takes the train to visit her aunt, who has Alzheimer’s and barely recognises her; the visit brings back memories of Chen Huiying’s troubled family background. Meanwhile, He returns home after his operation and starts leading a normal life again, cleaning and cooking for himself. Finally, he decides to pay Chen Huiying a visit.
REVIEW
Beijing-born indie film-maker Peng Tao 彭韬 continues his interest in the emotional worlds of socially marginal characters in his sixth feature, Listening to the Wind 风过耳. It’s similar in many ways to his previous feature, Leaving with Love 别离 (2017) – especially in its slim plotting, “scenes from life” approach, and underlying quest for family ties – and is also carried by a quietly powerful performance by its lead actress, in this case Cao Xiwen 曹曦文. But it’s far more ambitious structurally, taking the viewer along on a voyage of discovery into the protagonists’ lives as they search in their separate ways for “family”. That’s the underlying theme in a film that initially seems distanced but does finally deliver on an emotional level. That said – and despite the fact that Listening is never a hard sit – there’s no need for it to be 2½ hours long.
Though it’s been eight years since Leaving with Love, Peng has not been exactly idle, making two documentary TV series, 重走古战场 (2021, literally “Revisiting Ancient Battlefields”) and 中华好儿女 (2023, “Good Sons and Daughters of China”), the latter celebrating the 70th anniversary of victory in the Korean War through people’s personal stories. In the meantime Listening worked its way through various funding projects and reached a final cut in Nov 2023, premiering in a sidebar of the Shanghai film festival (where Leaving was also first shown) in Jun 2025.
Set in the poorer and less photogenic suburbs of Chongqing city, central China, the film opens during a typically hot summer and initially seems to centre on the life of He, a blind widower (Shanghai-born character actor Yao Anlian 姚安濂, also billed as the film’s creative producer 监制) who lives alone and is visited every day by a female carer, Huiying (Cao), who also works in a bottling factory. He spends his days wandering on his own and occasionally visiting a film club for blind people, also frequented by a blind masseur friend. But He has quietly become very fond of the younger Huiying and one day makes a vague approach to her – which she rejects. Meanwhile, a mystery man, who seems to have some kind of connection with He, wanders through the neighbourhood and even silently turns up at He’s home to observe him.
The film is basically a voyage by the viewer to understand the connections between the three leads and their backstories – a slow process of getting to know them and thus becoming involved. It’s half-an-hour before Peng starts to offer any information about the mystery man and only a while after that does his connection with Huiying and He become clearer. Meanwhile, Huiying’s background is slowly filled in, as well as her friendship with a fellow factory worker who’s pregnant by an absent boyfriend. Film-makers’ deliberate withholding of information about their characters can be very annoying for an audience; but in Listening Peng turns it into something proactive, even though it sometimes results in dialogue that’s more expository than natural.
Initially, He looks to be the central character, not least because he’s played by the well-known Yao. But gradually, as the mystery man becomes entwined in the story, the film starts to pivot on Huiying, as the one who links the two men together. When she develops her own problems, and He learns he can finally get a cornea transplant to regain his sight (and thus dramatically change his life), the film appears to strike off in a new direction. However, a moving coda, set some five years later, cleverly binds several of the characters together again, in a complex “family” that they were never able to achieve naturally.
The always reliable Yao, 67, is largely known as a TV actor but has also done some sterling character work on film (the widower in The Red Awn 红色康拜因, 2007; sick restaurateur in Here There 这里 那里, 2011; lead’s father in Double Xposure 二次曝光, 2012). Here he’s perfectly cast as the lonely, slightly pessimistic old man, while Wang Yanjiang 王彦江, who had a small role in Leaving, is okay as the mystery man. But it’s Zhejiang-born Cao, 41, largely a TV actress, who, like Li Qinqin 李勤勤 in Leaving, turns out to be the heart and soul of the movie, in a beautifully restrained performance that holds the whole thing together. Scenes such as her dealing quietly with He’s advances, or visiting an aunt with Alzheimer’s, are masterclasses in minimalist acting. Among the supporting cast, Yin Yuanzhang 尹元章 is notable as He’s blind masseur friend and Zhu Zhongchun 朱仲春 as a quieter old pal.
The alleyways and less showy parts of Chongqing are naturally but strikingly captured by d.p. Du Changbo 杜昌博, and the typically resonant scoring by Iranian composer Peyman Yazdanian (Buddha Mountain 观音山, 2010; Mystery 浮城谜事, 2012; The Oldtown Girls 兔子暴力, 2020; Return to Dust 隐入尘烟, 2022) adds welcome atmosphere at key points. Though the film does finally deliver emotionally in its coda, a few plot points en route still need clearer elaboration. Also, a tighter running time, of around 115 mins, would achieve the same effect. Candidates for cutting include a 10-minute sequence of Huiying talking and dancing with a Monkey King street performer one night, and scenes between the mystery man and a wall painter. Both add nothing to the film or the characters. The Chinese title literally means “Wind Past the Ears”.
CREDITS
Presented by Heaven Pictures (Shanghai) (CN), Beijing TH Entertainment (CN). Produced by Beijing Tao Productions (CN).
Script: Peng Tao. Photography: Du Changbo. Editing: Peng Tao. Music: Peyman Yazdanian. Art direction: Zhao Bin. Costumes: Jin Chenke. Styling: Jing Lijuan. Sound: Yu Zhiguo, Zhao Suchen. Executive direction: Lin Haitao.
Cast: Yao Anlian (He), Cao Xiwen (Chen Huiying), Wang Yanjiang (He Daming; Monkey King)), Liu Ye (Tang Yu), Tian Xuelian (Zhang, doctor), Yin Yuanzhang (Zhao, blind masseur), Zhu Zhongchun (Tian Guoqing), Li Wake (painter), Xiang Hong (Chen Fenglian), Qin Junzhe (Liu, film narrator), Chen Sirong (Pingyun), Luo Yiqiao (He Xiaolan), Li Ai (Monkey King, acrobatics), SiMorui (Fugui, boy in street).
Premiere: Shanghai Film Festival (Refreshing Chinese Cinema), 14 Jun 2025.
Releae: China, tba.