The Busan International film festival welcomed the latest entry of Chinese auteur Gu You into its main competition this year. Titled “The First Taste of Loneliness,” the film arrives as the culmination of Gu’s self-described “Landscape” trilogy, a series that treats everyday domestic spaces as extensions of traditional Chinese painting.
Set in Hangzhou, the narrative follows three generations of women—mother Luna (Xi Meijuan), daughter Yue (Zhou Xun) and granddaughter Moon (Wang Shengdi)—as they navigate the vacuum left by the patriarch’s death from pancreatic cancer. While the opening vigil is raw and tear-laden, the film’s most resonant beat arrives later, when Yue samples her late father’s homemade pickles for the final time and sighs, “It’s a good batch.” The line, simple yet weighty, encapsulates the movie’s devotion to ordinary gestures that echo larger emotions.
Grief rendered in domestic detail
Gu structures the story around a series of intimate rituals: the lingering smell of fermented vegetables, the cluttered bookshelves that have never been cleared, and the persistent hum of the Qiantang River beyond the apartment’s large windows. These details function as visual metaphors for the characters’ internal states, allowing the audience to feel the lingering presence of the deceased without his on-screen appearance.
Each woman confronts loneliness in a distinct way. Luna, the widowed matriarch, wrestles with the expectation to remain solemn while slowly allowing herself a flirtation with a new love interest, Xu (Xu Chaoying). Yue, freshly divorced and returning from a career in Beijing’s fashion world, must decide whether to remain anchored to her past role as caretaker or to pursue her own aspirations. Moon, on the cusp of adulthood, grapples with school pressures and the dawning responsibility of making independent choices. The trio’s arcs intertwine, and Gu’s screenplay lets one woman’s newfound freedom subtly lift the others’, creating a gently escalating sense of liberation.
Landscape aesthetics and the trilogy’s evolution
Visually, the film is a study in long takes and sweeping pans that echo the brushstrokes of classical Chinese landscape painting. Cinematographer Takimoto Mikiya crafts shots that glide across the apartment’s cluttered interiors and out toward the river, employing a palette of misty gray and mossy green. The director has likened each frame to a scroll unfurling, a notion that informs the film’s measured pacing.
The work follows Gu’s earlier entries, “Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains” (Cannes Critics’ Week, 2019) and “Dwelling by the West Lake” (Tokyo International Film Festival, 2023). Though the three movies share no characters, they are bound by this painterly visual language and a philosophical preoccupation with how landscape—both natural and domestic—shapes human experience. Compared with the first two, the Hangzhou-set installment embraces a slightly broader, more populist tone, which could help it secure wider international distribution.
Looking ahead: a fourth film in development
Even as the curtain falls on the Busan screening, Gu confirms that a fourth chapter is already in the research stage. Produced by Hangzhou Shanshui Films in partnership with France’s Tandem Films, the forthcoming project will continue to trace three generations of women, this time exploring loneliness through a genre-inflected lens—potentially incorporating romance, road-movie elements, or suspense.
Gu admits that the thematic core—examining the relationship between landscape and cinema—remains “extraordinarily difficult,” yet he feels he is only “just beginning.” Inspirations range from Song Dynasty poet Su Dongpo’s metaphor of a swan landing on melting snow to Buddhist ideas that view affliction as a path to enlightenment. The director also notes the relevance of the story in an aging East Asian society, where widowed parents entering new relationships can spark inter-generational tension.
Production will adhere to the same six-rule visual framework established for the trilogy: every shot must function like a painting, and the final cut consists of just over fifty meticulously captured takes. Gu rejects digital stitching for these long takes, arguing that acknowledging any CGI manipulation would betray the audience’s trust in the film’s raw authenticity.
As the Busan festival runs through October 15, global audiences will be watching closely to gauge how the film’s delicate balance of melodrama and visual poetry resonates. For Gu You, the reception is less a destination than a stepping stone toward the next evolution of his landscape-driven storytelling.
