Jianying Chen’s explores home and memories in her transcendental memory lane short film Palme d’Or winner, The Water Murmurs.
This year’s Short Film Palme d’Or went to Chinese filmmaker Jianying Chen, for her depicted memory-lane of her forgotten town in The Water Murmurs. The Short Film program rarely gets any coverage as it is programmed on the second to last day of the festival, with unknown names in the lineup. For this year, Chen’s short film Palme d’Or winner played with the form using a travel-esque structure and a twist showing a deeper connection to one’s upbringing and place.
In a provincial town in China, an asteroid has hit the region that caused a tsunami to displace the waters to force the community to evacuate without notice. Our protagonist, Nian goes through her formidable locations where she had a meaningful linkage between her childhood and now as a young adult. As she realizes that these places may be the last time she may ever visit, she goes through each location including her elementary school where she meets an old friend, a marketplace meeting a with an older wise man from childhood, and a restaurant that she frequented showing the friendly and accepting community. Warnings and announcements are made throughout her journey saying that the evacuation is nearby as she somberly walks through this small town in a poetic gesture.
The camerawork is the other poetic aspect that makes the film quite beautiful. Floating along these locations as a ghost wandering a deserted town, the sense of a forgotten place is inevitable. Once Nian finishes her tour of her long-lost town, the film takes a twist in a simple filter shift causing the storytelling to allow us audience be more in tune with her memory. This short piece on our own individual upbringings shows us the true meaning of belonging and place.
