Reflection in the Lake
时间旅馆
China, 2024, colour, 1.85:1, 93 mins.
Director: Zhai Yixiang 翟义祥.
Rating: 3/10.
Over-long, vacuous and poorly written sketch of two uninteresting characters maybe rekindling a relationship over the course of a couple of days.
STORY
Nanjing city, eastern China, the present day. A onetime online editor and now copywriter for an advertising agency in Hangzhou, Gao Li (Wang Jiajia) arrives by train in Nanjing to conduct some editorial research and also to meet a former lover, well-known novelist Li Tang (Zhang Benyu). She goes to a bookshop where he is on a discussion panel and ends up joining everyone for a drunken dinner afterwards. She and Li Tang have a quiet drink and then go back to her hotel room, where they have a cuddle and more chat. She is peeved that he never kept in touch with her after they broke up, and he reveals he broke up with his new girlfriend a couple of months ago. (After getting to know each other online, they had first met face to face at an archaeological dig where he was doing research for a novel. They had gone for a walk, and then to bed in his hotel room.) The next day she conducts some interviews for work and in the afternoon they go for a walk around the city. They take the ferry to his hometown where he shows her a ruined house that was in one of his novels. While there, she is phoned by a man with whom she appears to be in a relationship. Li Tang introduces her as his girlfriend to two old relatives whom he hasn’t seen for a while. They make Li Tang and Gao Li welcome and Auntie Zhou (Wei Qing) privately confides in Gao Li what a difficult childhood Li Tang had. They take the ferry back at night and make love in her hotel room. Next morning she checks out of the hotel and tells Li Tang she wants to visit Xuanwu Lake before leaving. There she finally tells him what she’s been wanting to say for some time.
REVIEW
Two rather uninteresting characters spend a lot of time wandering around Nanjing and having unresolved conversations in Reflection in the Lake 时间旅馆, the third (and most accessible) feature by Jiangsu-born film-maker Zhai Yixiang 翟义祥, 39, following his two abstract dramas This Worldly Life 还俗 (2015) and Mosaic Portrait 马赛克少女 (2019). A revelation by one character around the 70-minute mark, plus a coda that resets the goalposts, are hardly enough to justify the rest of this rambling film that would have worked much better as a half-hour short. Shot in two lumps (summer 2022 and spring 2023), with the same key crew but slightly different staff, it premiered at the Pingyao festival in autumn 2024 and finally got a small Mainland release this spring, taking a microscopic RMB180,000.
Zhai’s screenplay is adapted from the novella Reflection in the Lake 湖水倒映 by Nanjing-born avant-garde writer Cao Kou 曹寇, now in his late 40s. It was originally published in 2004 (under the title 新死, literally “Newly Dead”) and later, after revision and retitling, included in Cao’s novella collection 在县城 (“In the County Town”), published in 2017 (see left). In the original novella, the female character is a former high-school teacher of the male character, a literary professional; their chance meeting after many years gradually peels back the layers on their relationship. In the film, the female character, Gao Li, is an ad copywriter who was the lover of well-known novelist Li Tang until a couple of years ago; though he hasn’t kept in touch, she arranges to meet him when she visits Nanjing on a business trip. Cao has stated he considers the movie a separate work.
Zhai’s script takes a long time to clear its throat: after scenes of Gao Li hanging around a discussion panel in a bookshop and then joining a boozy dinner afterwards, it’s only directly revealed that she and novelist Li Tang know each other and were once in an intimate relationship. This wouldn’t matter if the dialogue to that point was interesting, or pregnant with meaning, but it isn’t: the panelists are media and academic cut-outs engaging in hollow dinner talk – something which Gao Li punctures during the dinner itself, though to little point. Thereafter, apart from one apparent flashback showing their first meeting, the two protagonists spend most of the next two days alone together, roaming round Nanjing and its environs, engaging in vacuous talk, visiting Li Tang’s home village, and briefly rekindling their shared fires. The script tries to operate on a purely metaphysical level, and is frustratingly unclear about various details of the relationship. The late-on “revelations” hardly disguise the fact that Reflection is an empty vessel with no clear provenance or destination.
A solid supporting actress who’s often better than the films she appears in, Liaoning-born Wang Jiajia 王佳佳 (So Young 致我们终将逝去的青春, 2013; Wisdom Tooth 日光之下, 2019), who was 38 at the time of shooting, often has to get by on looks and elegance in the face of her character’s lack of substance. Zhang Benyu 张本煜, a versatile writer/performer (Pegasus 飞驰人生, 2019; Be Somebody 扬名立万, 2021) then in his late 30s, is even more helpless in the face of the script’s emptiness, stuck with a character who’s completely self-centred and not used to talking about himself. Veteran actress Wei Qing 苇青 briefly livens things up as a village relative of Li Tang, and is the only relatable character in the whole movie.
Technical credits are okay, on a budget. Considering the novella’s title a bit too literary, Zhai chose a new Chinese title for the film (literally, “Time Hotel”) but retained the English translation. (The film is often wrongly referred to in English sources as Reflections [plural] in the Lake.) The creative producer 监制, Nai An 耐安, is well-known for her festival-friendly, artsy fare.
CREDITS
Presented by Zizen Studios (Nanjing) (CN), Blackfin (Beijing) Production (CN). Produced by Blackfiln (Beijing) Production (CN).
Script: Zhai Yixiang. Novella: Cao Kou. Photography: Li Chunyu. Editing: Li Peng. Editing advice: Zhu Lin. Music: Chen Xiaoshu. Art direction: Xiong Yue. Styling: Wu Yanmei. Sound: Lou Kun. Executive direction: Yu Tianji.
Cast: Zhang Benyu (Li Tang), Wang Jiajia (Gao Li), Wei Qing (Auntie Zhou), Yang Pingdao (Wang Xiaojie, film director), Shen Xiaoping (Zhang Ping, professor), Wang Feifei (Wang, curator), Yang Jin (dinner guest), Gao Da (Gao, curator), Chen Dekang (Uncle Zhou), Huang Fan (poet at dinner), Tang Yan (female questioner in audience), Hua Dexi (young actress), Zhou Manxu (female interviewee), Dong Changqing (male interviewee).
Premiere: Pingyao Film Festival (Hidden Dragons), 24 Sep 2024.
Release: China, 20 Mar 2026.