Short (15 min), streams on MUBI. The story is told from the perspective of a black cat who wants to know what "the most precious thing in the world" is. He goes out on a sort of quest to meet three "weirdos" who might have an answer. I didn't understand what the short was actually trying to say, or how any of the scenes fit together other than by being as absurd as each other. Is that the point? Is there a point?
One thing I did enjoy is the creativity of some shots, for example:
- there's a scene acted in reverse and then played in reverse, so it feels weird and it takes a moment to understand why. Not unheard of, but the character is smoking and the smoke going back into his mouth is a pretty cool effect
- there's a shot that's filmed bottom up (so sky at the bottom), which also is not that uncommon, but the nice thing is that the camera trails until a lake appears at the top of the screen, and then a reflection appears in the lake—and the reflection is right side up. Bi Gan could have started the shot with the reflection but didn't and this makes it special
Still, I should be way more into the technicalities of filmmaking to find these things enough in themselves. To me they're neat tricks, but the plot they're here to support is... is there a plot?
5/10