One of the benefits of seeing films at their very earliest screenings, before they’ve even been unveiled to the world at a splashy festival premiere, is being able to experience them truly blind. In the case of The Sun Rises On Us All, the latest film from Chinese auteur Cai Shangjun, which just premiered in competition at the Venice Film Festival, even the vaguest synopsis robs it of its mystique, immediately defining an uneasy relationship between two disparate characters that the film itself deliberately takes its time unpacking. I’m not sure how much I can write about Shangjun’s film whilst only alluding to the dynamics of that central relationship, but I can attest to the fact that its examination of sacrifice is all the more powerful because of its calculated detachment, letting the estranged pair’s history gradually make itself known long after we learn how its ramifications are still being felt in the present day. 

We’re first introduced to Meiyun (Xin Zhilei), awaiting results from an ultrasound scan, one of several problems plaguing her, before Baoshu (Zhang Songwen) returns to her life. Not only is she pregnant with a married businessman who seems unwilling to commit to her due to being at the centre of a blackmail plot, her professional life is in disarray too; she runs a boutique clothing store, and is still awaiting a refund for a large batch of damaged clothing which she accidentally sold on, ruining her own reputation as a fashion guru. Back at the hospital, she re-encounters Baoshu, where he’s being treated for cancer, and returns later to state that she will continue to care for him once he’s been discharged, even as he attempts to flee and hide in another ward. He remains cold but eventually takes her up on the offer and moves into her apartment – a step which doesn’t counter the frosty terms between the pair, but Meiyun remains persistent, even when faced with his every attempt to push her away, which is still long before he even directly addresses the historic actions that led them to grow apart in the first place. 

Zhilei, who very deservedly won the Volpi Cup Best Actress prize at Venice, is incredible here, demonstrating a silent resilience in the face of various melodramatic plot obstacles, which at times makes the film feel closer to brooding social realism than it should. The film does quite noticeably dance around some of the issues presented – the topic of abortion is inferred but never directly addressed, presumably as Shangjun didn’t want to face the uphill censorship battles his last film, People Mountain People Sea, did at home – but this scattershot approach works in the film’s favour, dragging the audience further into the headspace of a woman in personal and professional disarray. Meiyun is a character used to putting up a facade, always in constant hiding from her past, or hiding her relationships from the wider world, and the screenplay – by Shangjun and Nianjin Han – deftly introduces us to her at the very moment these internal dilemmas are finally coming into conflict, which Zhilei approaches by gradually leaning into the pure heightened desperation of a woman in this position. 

Some critics have likened the film to a subversion of classic romantic drama tropes through the way the two leads navigate rebuilding their relationship, but Zhilei and Songwen’s performances are complimentary in a way that I felt was in opposition to such a simple reading. The dynamics of their relationship are grounded in the ramifications of an earlier sacrifice one made for the other, and that history complicates any idea that they could return to a shared dynamic as straightforward as a romantic one again. Both performers keep their cards close to their chests even after we have been clued into the full picture of their past, frequently appearing morally slippery even as we’re given ample reason to find things worth empathising with in both. There are plenty of emotionally heightened sequences as you’d expect from a film that plays in the melodrama sandbox, but few are as intense as those in which they’re forced into sharing the same space, years of unresolved trauma lingering between them. 

In both the plot synopsis and Shangjun’s own director’s statement presented on the Venice Film Festival website, the final scene – and how its characters infer it as a shot at redemption – is teased a little too openly, leaving very little to the imagination as to the direction the narrative takes. I’d argue that the sheer bluntness of that finale is a misstep following a more restrained character study that came before, recontextualising a harrowing but thoughtful drama as mere misery porn that cheapens a more contemplative examination of a complicated dynamic. This is a film that is at its best when keeping the unrealised and unresolved emotions between its two leads at the forefront of the drama, affording them no chance to reconcile or redeem themselves, no matter how many times they talk through the events that led to their estrangement.  

It’s devastating, with several gruelling moments, but always feels grounded within a fully realised dynamic, admirably devoid of the shock factor which brings the third act to a close. It’s a movie that takes its time to fully embrace the histrionics of melodrama – and unfortunately, by that point, Shangjun has proven he didn’t need to rely on any additional over-the-top theatrics when the character study was already impossibly intense at its most grounded.  

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Written by Alistair Ryder

Featured image courtesy of the Venice Film Festival

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