An Unfinished Film

...we’re invited to reflect not only on the film Lou has made, but also the film he hasn’t made and perhaps can’t.

The vertiginous condensing of fiction and nonfiction, of past and present, has a radically destabilizing effect that’s inseparable from the audacity of Lou’s political vision.

Life gets in the way of art all the time, and art can be made out of life. What matters, the movie suggests, is hanging onto one another for dear life.

If the frames of Lou’s previous work suggested that reality was something that could be unlocked and unfurled, An Unfinished Film’s presentation of reality as it basically was unfortunately gives the filmmaker, and the audience, little to discover.

It’s the ominous build-up to the lockdown that has the characteristic urgency, tension, and suspense associated with Lou Ye’s cinema. It is the part that is gripping, involving as well as emotionally exhausting—that feeling of being trapped...

Nostalgic docufiction that morphs into a lockdown thriller.

An Unfinished Film, fleshed out as a docufiction, blends crafted footage and semi-fake footage...to create an even realer reflection of how exactly the pandemic affected the togetherness of filmmaking.

Lou breaks the boundaries to deliver a fascinating feature that was born from fiction but built by real life. The result is artistic, divisive but nonetheless necessary.

For people who did not experience the pandemic or do not mind relieving the pandemic, “An Unfinished Film” is the definitive film of that era, which is why viewers who do not normally watch films that they live through should probably avoid this movie.

Reality and fiction collapse in on themselves for this metatextual drama about the authoritarian constraints imposed on art and life, incited by a lumbering hunk of dramatic irony: that a crew should head to Wuhan in January 2020 to finish their film.