Artist in Person

(Dong Ci Bian Wei). A missing poet, a love affair gone stale, a passion for things Parisian, a pile of cash, and a winter wasteland created by the crushed hopes of Tiananmen Square conjugate the many moods of Emily Tang's subtle debut feature. Set in Beijing during the winter of 1989, Conjugation introduces a generation of sleepwalkers who refuse to fully surrender their dreams. Guo Song, a recent graduate, finds himself consigned to the drudgery of factory life. He spends his spare time with former classmates, caught under the influence of drink and lost idealism and haunted by the memory of a friend who vanished when their world fell apart. Meanwhile, his Francophile girlfriend seeks refuge in her own private rive gauche, becoming a barmaid with a penchant for seducing middle-aged men with lurid tales. In the end, an unlikely mélange of styles, reminiscent of Krzysztof Kieslowski, Olivier Assayas, and Tsai Ming-liang, gives shape to a kind of Chinese ghost story, with human shades still haunted by the phantom of liberty.