Some Rain Must Fall
2024, 1h 38m, Drama
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40-year-old housewife Cai has lost track of who she is and who she wants to be. During one of her daughter’s basketball matches, she inadvertently injures an elderly woman. This seemingly trivial event is a catalyst for a life spinning out of control, as past events resurface while she moves into an unknown future. Director Qiu Yang follows a series of multi-awarded shorts with his debut feature, a mesmerizing and intimate drama about a woman forced to confront the wreckage of her life and her longing for change?
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MIFF REVIEW: Some Rain Must Fall (2024)
drama, review
There is a lot of talent behind Some Rain Must Fall, Qui Yang’s brooding debut feature. The performances are strong, the aesthetic is powerful and consistent, and yet when viewed overall the film does not quite pull together as it should. It is impressive work for a first feature, as one might expect from a Cannes short film Palme d’Or winner, but it is also a weirdly frustrating film to watch. I find myself not recommending it, but rather recommending waiting to see what its director does next.
Cai (Yu Aier) is a woman in her forties spending too much of her time caring for a senile mother-in-law, while suffering a growing disconnect with her daughter and planning to divorce her ungrateful husband. An unintended violent incident on a high school basketball court sends Cai’s life spiralling into pieces, and she is forced to confront secrets from her past in order to find a stable future.
Some Rain Must Fall is an immensely stylish film, with a strong thematic use of colour and a particularly bleak, claustrophobic mise-en-scène. With cinematographer Constanze Schmitt, Qui not only shoots in a 4:3 “academy” ratio, but captures her characters through all many of barriers: doorways, windows, and curtains persistently get in the camera’s way. We rarely see anybody’s face in anything more than profile. Quite often we can only see the back of their head. If significant action does occur, we do not see it: our view is of others’ reactions instead. The narrative is broken open by repeated use of ellipsis. It all combines to deliver an immense emotional impact, but it also leads to a weakening of story and a distracting artificiality. There is an insightful focus on Cai’s emotions and inner turmoil, but it comes to the expense of the other characters.
As if often the case with these internationally funded Chinese dramas, diegetic sound prevails to create a harsher sense of realism. In this case it seems in conflict with the stylised photography. A very slow pace also interferes with audience engagement, particularly a rather wobbly dénouement that fails to comfortably identify an exit point.
Yu Aier is sensational in the lead role, and is backed by reasonably strong performances across the board – notably Di Shike and Wei Yibo. With limited dialogue, it is the silences between characters that provide the most illumination, and the largely new talent do an excellent job.
Qui demonstrates great capacity in this film for stylistic innovation, but that innovation is badly in need of tempering to ensure a more watchable, satisfying experience. While the characters are interesting it is like watching them with one eye closed. We never get close enough for it all to mean anything of note. It is very promising on the surface, but the contents feel hollow.
Some Rain Must Fall is screening at the 2024 Melbourne International Film Festival. Click here for more information.
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‘Some Rain Must Fall’ frames a mother’s despondency and desire
A quiet, powerful unraveling of middle class Chinese womanhood debuts at Tribeca
Yu Aier (left) stars as Cai in Qiu Yang's "Some Rain Must Fall."
Courtesy of Wild Grass Films
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Words by Siddhant Adlakha
Chinese filmmaker Qiu Yang's Some Rain Must Fall is a masterful feature debut: a slow-burn unraveling of a middle-aged woman's psyche that reveals and obscures in equal measure. At its center is 40-something Cai (Yu Aier), an intriguingly bitter wife and mother in a small Chinese city, whose life spins out of control when she causes an unfortunate accident. In its mere 98 minutes, the understated drama explores entire worlds of thought, feeling, and desire, resulting in one of the most emotionally piercing works of cinema this year.
Now playing in the International Narrative Competition at Tribeca—where it won Best Actress and Best Cinematography—the China-U.S.-France-Singapore co-production also received the Encounters Special Jury Award at the Berlin Film Festival, an accolade that was richly deserved since the movie announces the arrival of a major filmmaking voice. Qiu's painterly approach is as overtly alluring as it is subtly suffocating; his framing and blocking cause each wall and surface to close in on Cai the more she reckons with her past. And yet, despite the story being rooted in a single incident, its drama radiates outward in layered ripples, as Yu's resolute central performance oscillates between ruthless and deeply pained.
When the film begins, Cai already reads like a wounded animal, even during an errand as simple as fetching her adolescent daughter, Lin (Di Shike), from afterschool basketball practice. Lin, however, is nowhere to be found. She seems to have cut out early, and while this inconveniences Cai, their relationship immediately feels rocky-even without Lin's on-screen presence-for more complex reasons yet to be explored. In the moment, Yu's expression tells us all we need to know, and creates an immediate sense of mystery when she acts out in anger, and launches a stray basketball back toward its owners, only to accidentally hit an old woman-the grandmother of one of Lin's classmates-badly injuring her.
This incident makes Cai persona non grata amidst her peers and even the local schoolchildren, but while it forms the backbone of the movie's plot, it's more of a catalyst for emotional elements already in the mix; it's the mere spark that lights them ablaze. Cai's spiral, from there on out, concerns not only the old woman's family, but her own. Her husband Ding (Wei Yibo) wants a divorce. Her growing distance from Lin, though it initially feels like run-of-the-mill teenage angst, turns out to be a two-way street, buoyed by a number of Cai's maternal insecurities, which the movie gradually unravels as it reveals her past.
In "Some Rain Must Fall," Yu Aier (right) and Di Shike play mother and daughter, with a strained relationship.
Courtesy of Wild Grass Films
All the while, Qiu and cinematographer Constanze Schmitt make devastating use of the moving image. Their narrow 4:3 frame grows even narrower in low-lit scenes-like the inside of Cai's car, where she spends plenty of time alone-with shadows and the contours of darkened spaces closing in on her like a vice. Each scene, in some fashion, boxes her in, whether through the use of pillars and other architectural fixtures when she moves through her neighborhood, or the sharp edges of doorways in her home. The frame always seems to tighten around her.
Conversely, when Qiu shoots other people in close up, he hides them behind these soft-focus edges, which results in a dual psychological effect. Cai doubts the intentions of many characters around her, like Lin's classmate (Xu Tianyi) and his poor family, who she suspects are using the grandmother's injury to extort them. However, as the film goes on, Cai's unhappiness becomes tied to her middle-class ennui. Her outlook on the aforementioned student-whose name she never bothers learning-becomes slowly but surely wrapped in notions of class divide, and eventually, class traitorship, the more we learn about her own impoverished upbringing. Her perspective may not shift, but the audience's does the more we learn about her. Before long, the obscuring edges of the frame start to feel like representations of her own blinkered outlook.
"Some Rain Must Fall," recently received the Encounters Special Jury Award at the Berlin Film Festival.
Courtesy of Wild Grass Films
Some Rain Must Fall's dramatic power lies not only in what it depicts, but what it chooses to omit-we never see the injured grandmother, for instance-because of how closely the film's aesthetic becomes tied to Cai's psychology, and her inability to look outside herself for fear of being hurt. The movie's visual constrictions become an aesthetic representation of a troubled mind and soul, especially in its brief, dreamlike moments when Cai is the only character or object visible on screen, in an otherwise darkened space, as though she were waiting for something or someone else to materialize, just so she could feel less alone.
Qui based some of Cai's attributes on his own mother, including her escape from poverty and her ascent to middle class wealth, though he neither demonizes the character nor crafts a hagiography. His approach is much more nuanced, and even extends to Cai's sexual desires, both when it comes to her distant husband, as well as the middle-aged woman who helps care for her ailing mother-in-law. The film is as unrelenting in its portrayal of Cai's flaws-like her refusal to fully see the people around her-as it is gentle in its unfurling of her delicate sense of being, and her inability to fully see herself outside of domestic confines. She feels lost and abandoned, and in the process, abandons those around her too.
It's a vicious cycle, on whose origins Qui gradually rolls back the curtain. In the process, Some Rain Must Fall reveals deeply moving introspections on the traumas, wants, and broken bonds that have made Cai the embittered but deeply sympathetic wife, mother, and person she is today.
Published on June 25, 2024
Words by Siddhant Adlakha
Siddhant Adlakha is a critic and filmmaker from Mumbai, though he now lives in New York City. They're more similar than you'd think. Find him at @SiddhantAdlakha on Twitter
Mohttps://joysauce.com/some-rain-must-fall-frames-a-mothers-despondency-and-desire/
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Some Rain Must Fall — Qiu Yang [Tribeca ’24 Review]
June 15, 2024 - by Conor Truax
Credit: Tribeca Film Festival
Writer-director Qiu Yang’s first feature film, Some Rain Must Fall, begins during monsoon season. Cai (Yu Aier) is in the midst of finalizing her divorce from Ding (Wei Yibo), the coming-of-age rebellion of her daughter, Lin (Di Shike), and the illness of her father (Zhu Lizheng). The film opens with, and maintains, a thematically consistent asphyxiating frame. The margins are narrow (4:3), and most scenes either take place at gloam or in the shaded darkness of hallways, stairwells, hospitals, and markets. There is a notably liminal quality to the film, one that reflects the fork of Cai’s midlife.
In the first scene, she fails to get in touch with her husband to confirm that he has finalized the signatures on her divorce petition. Then, she walks into a basketball gymnasium to pick up Ling, only to find out she is absent, having snuck off with a boy. With her back turned to the darkness of the gymnasium, she is hit in the back by a stray basketball. After brusquely being told to throw it back, the reserved Cai — who possesses a flat affect and moves as if a ghost — throws the ball back forcefully, accidentally hitting an elderly woman offscreen. Qiu does not move the camera from Cai, and the effect she’s caused remains extradiegetic, confined to the periphery of her experience. The other woman is hospitalized, and it’s unclear whether she will survive.
While this scene’s dramatic tension is not quite sustained over the remainder of the film’s 90-minute runtime, it serves as a microcosm of the melodramatic cycles that take place over the next three days. With each sequence, Cai navigates her life in a zombified stupor, outwardly dispassionate and apathetic. Then, in moments of critical frustration, she lashes out; whether by throwing plates or by self-harming. Often, these scenes are followed by an oneiric denouement which finds Cai locked in a plane of darkness, adrift and in search of light. Indeed, the use of light is Qiu’s greatest strength in his first feature, although at times it can also feel overwrought. His main stylistic flourish is in his use of chiaroscuro and baroque lighting, defaulting to a palette typically leveraged both in sparse dramas (like Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas) and unconventional noirs (Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, for instance).
Just as in Paris, Texas, the colors he primarily employs are green, yellow, and red. Yellow is often found in the home’s lighting, where there is a pervasive sense of foreboding, celebration, and grief simultaneously, at the site of Cai’s marriage’s demise. Green is frequently found in sites of rebirth; Lin can often be seen wearing it throughout her development as a woman, and in the daylight after the long-awaited storm. Red, the color used maximally by Qiu (at times to a fault), encroaches on Cai, the landscape, and eventually the viewer in the purlieu of their screen; it represents at once Ling’s engulfing rage and her anxiety toward the structurally collapsing environs in which she finds herself.
Despite the film’s general subtlety, it is not particularly allergic to clichés. The rain finally comes, the divorce is finalized, and Cai is reborn. Some Rain Must Fall, then, ends on a rather contrived note: a visit to the dentist. He tells her that her tooth is broken, and that he has to “clean it first. The damage is quite deep. This will be painful.” She grimaces when he inserts his instrument; in a moment of small triumph, we finally see Cai accept her circumstance, and she begins to cry. Qiu’s debut is a quiet one, respectably uplifting Yu’s strong performance. It’s a movie about death and rebirth and the varying cycles of life, propelled one after the other by their obverse — sacrifice and selfishness, loathing and love — to great effect. And while Qiu may not be able to sustain the suspense he initially establishes or fails to distinctively interrogate the film’s content, he has made an assuredly beautiful film frame-by-frame, one that gestures toward the work of a great filmmaker to come.
Published as part of Tribeca Film Festival 2024 — Dispatch 2.
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『空室の女』★
Some Rain Must Fall（空房間裡的女人）
東京フィルメックス・コンペティション
作品詳細
中国、アメリカ、フランス、シンガポール / 2024 / 98分
監督：チウ・ヤン（ QIU Yang ）
40代の主婦、ツァイは人生の目的を失い、大きな精神的崩壊の瀬戸際にいる。映画の冒頭で、彼女は不運な形で年配の女性に怪我を負わせてしまい、入院したその女性の家族から賠償を求められる。この出来事を導入として、私たちは彼女の置かれている状況を目にしていく。夫とは離婚手続き中で、反抗期の娘との間にも深い溝がある。同居中の義母はどうやら認知症を患っており、疎遠になって久しい実父は死期が近いようだ。彼女は、自分の上にのしかかる重荷や憂鬱から逃れようともがいている。この作品は、こうしたツァイの「中年の危機」的状況、ひいては中国の中流階級家庭の機能不全を、4:3の息苦しいフレーミングと撮影監督のコンスタンツェ・シュミットによる美しく憂鬱なイメージによって極めて効果的に語る。映画初出演だという主演のユウ・アイアルの抑えた演技も素晴らしい。カンヌ映画祭の短編部門でパルムドールを受賞した「A Gentle Night」（17）等、一連の短編作品で高い評価を得てきた新鋭チウ・ヤンの長編デビュー作。ベルリン映画祭エンカウンターズ部門で初上映された。
© Chiang Wei Liang
監督：チウ・ヤン（ QIU Yang ）
中国常州市で生まれ育ち、オーストラリアのビクトリア芸術大学にて映画演出を学ぶ。
短編監督作「She Runs」は第58回カンヌ映画祭批評家週間にて最優秀短編作品賞を受賞。また、短編作『静かな夜』は第70回カンヌ映画祭で上映され、最優秀短編作品賞を受賞。
長編デビュー作である『空室の女』はベルリン映画祭エンカウンターズ部門にて上映された。
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Tribeca 2024 Review: Some Rain Must Fall
June 8, 2024/David Wangberg/No Comments
There has been a recent trend in which independent features are shot in 4:3 box format, as opposed to the usual widescreen format (16:9), as an attempt to capture a feeling of claustrophobia or anxiety. And, in some regards, it works. David Lowery executed this formatting perfectly with A Ghost Story, as did Robert Eggers with The Lighthouse, both of which showcased its protagonists dealing with inner demons that they couldn’t control after particular events. Qiu Yang’s Some Rain Must Fall does the same thing, as our main character faces a showcase of issues presented and discussed, and the world feels like it’s closing in on her with each passing minute.
Buy A Ghost Story Blu-ray
To a degree, it’s effective, and there are moments that capture that feeling of uncertainty exceptionally well. Its pacing serves as symbols of fear and dread, wondering what else could possibly go wrong in our protagonist’s world. But it reaches a point where it becomes more tedious than it does impactful, and there are many loose ends that leave the viewer baffled and frustrated.
Some Rain Must Fall focuses on Cai (Yu Aier), a middle-aged housewife who has lost her purpose in life. An unfortunate and violent accident in the beginning of the film opens up a closet full of other issues, including estranged relationships with her daughter and her husband. The divorce papers are signed and ready to be delivered, but there is still some (albeit minor) attraction she has to her husband. As more issues start to become present to the viewer, it’s apparent that Cai is wandering in a world in which she initially desired (marriage, family, etc.) to now feeling like none of it was ever meant to be. The weight that hangs over her is growing heavier each passing day, and the world in which she lives feels gloomier.
The potential we see in the beginning is squashed as it becomes more about the amount of things Cai deals with and less about how she’s working through them. While we’re supposed to grieve with Cai, there’s an emotional disconnect between the script and the rest of the film. The setting is right for attempting to capture the grim reality she faces, and some of the technical aspects amplify the feeling by raising the background noise to drown out conversations and giving that wall-closing-in appearance with the aspect ratio.
But the movie doesn’t allow the viewer to truly connect to Cai and her emotions. It just presents an avalanche of issues and gives them some time onscreen, but it all feels empty by the time the movie ends.
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Posted in Film Festival, Movie, Review
David Wangberg
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