Gu You's 'First Taste of Loneliness' Premieres at Busan — SkimNews
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- Gu You's 'The First Taste of Loneliness' premiered in the main competition at the Busan Film Festival, marking the third and final entry in his 'Landscape' trilogy following 'Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains' (Cannes 2019) and 'Dwelling by the West Lake' (2023).
- The film centers on three generations of women — Yue (Zhou Xun), her mother Luna (Xi Meijuan), and teenage daughter Moon (Wang Shengdi) — grieving a patriarch lost to pancreatic cancer while navigating new relationships and freedoms in their Hangzhou family apartment overlooking the Qiantang River.
- Cinematographer Takimoto Mikiya employs ambitiouly floating pans and watercolors of misty gray and mossy green, with the review singling out Xi Meijuan's performance as Luna — a widow dancing with suitor Xu (Xu Chaoying) — as 'especially poignant.'
- Reviewer strengths include the film's grace in depicting everyday details (Yue tasting her father's last jar of pickles) and how it braids the three women's arcs, while the critique flags the film as 'admittedly overlong' with 'stickily emotive ballads' and an overreliance on Sylvian Wang's plaintive piano score.
- Compared to Gu's predecessors, 'Loneliness' carries a 'broader, more populist streak' that could net greater global distribution, though the review notes this comes with 'artistic downsides' including more sentimental scoring.
Why it matters: By closing his trilogy with a more accessible, populist film rather than another austere art-house piece, Gu You is positioning himself for wider international distribution at Busan — a strategic pivot from a director whose prior films premiered at Cannes — with the catch that broader appeal comes with heavier-handed scoring and overwrought mourning scenes.
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