The Love of Mr An

This small-scale Chi­nese doc­u­men­tary by Yang Lina is an inti­mate look at rela­tion­ships and while it is cul­tur­ally spe­cific in some ways, the unex­pected emo­tional drama that unfolds is uni­ver­sal. Lao An is a slightly rum­pled but charm­ing eighty-nine-year-old Chi­nese man. He loves to dance at the neigh­bour­hood park, where locals crank up a big speaker and spend hours doing the lat­est ball­rooms danc­ing moves. It was at the park that he met Xiao Wei, a woman in her early fifties, unglam­orous but with a grand appre­ci­a­tion of the pos­si­bil­i­ties of life.

When the film begins it isn’t clear whether they are just friends or roman­ti­cally involved, but later they do open up about their emo­tions and it is clear that their love is what keeps them going through the dif­fi­cul­ties of life. Both are mar­ried and both spouses are aware of the rela­tion­ship. What is not said echoes loudly through the film. Lao and his wife are very unhappy together but feel they are too old to make any real changes to their lives. Lao is clearly giv­ing money to his com­pan­ion but nei­ther men­tion what place this money really has in their rela­tion­ship. While Lao is on one of his many stints in the hos­pi­tal, tragedy strikes but no one will tell him the truth about where Xiao Wei has gone.

The Love of Mr An is a small pow­er­ful film and while it makes no grand pro­nounce­ments about life it is most pro­found. It plays Mon, Sep 29th at Noon and Wed, Oct 8th at Noon, all at the Granville 7 Cinema.