The Breaking Ice (2023)

Director: Anthony Chen
Stars: Dongyu Zhou, Haoran Liu, Chuxiao Qu

In cold wintry Yanji, a city on China's northern border, young urbanite Haofeng, visiting from Shanghai, feels lost and adrift. By chance, he goes on a tour led by Nana, a charming tour guide who instantly fascinates him. She introduces him to Xiao, a personable but frustrated restaurant worker. The three bond quickly over a drunken weekend. Confronting their individual traumas, their frozen desires slowly thaw as they seek to liberate themselves from an icy world.

Originally premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. Singapore filmmaker Anthony Chen has made quite a bit of movies in the past like "IIo IIo" and "Wet Season" which were movies that I thought were solid but not amazing. Chen takes his new project in China in the city of Yanji in the winter and "The Breaking Ice" might be his best work to date.

Throughout, the production and the camerawork is gorgeous as the camera is able to capture the beauty of the winter landscapes, mountains, and environments that felt like a beautiful traditional painting. Including beautiful visual presentations and setting. The narrative explores themes about friendship, redemption, and loneliness and Anthony Chen's writing and direction is really good as Chen was able to help carry these themes and style together very well. The movie does offer art-house atmospheres and styles throughout which were also well-executed.

The characters, while admittedly there could be some more improvement on their depth personalities, were mostly interesting and had pretty good chemistry and energy between themselves. The performances from the cast members are pretty great and the main trio performances felt nature and realistic. Many of the dialogue moments were pretty good as they didn't feel forced, rather felt more nature. The soundtrack provided good emotions, compelling structure and setting with the vibrant music and score that helps to carry the atmosphere and emotions.

This one might not be for everyone as the movie is a bit slow for general audiences and those have some art-house style implemented. But overall, I really liked this movie quite a bit. A good winter comfort movie. Art-house Chinese cinema isn't discussed a lot but it definitely should be.

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