Notes on Re tian wu hou (Remains of the hot Day), by Wenqian Zhang, China: 2024-Berlin Filmfestival2024 V.-Berlinale Shorts 2)

Taking place in the late 1990s the film is an insight into the microcosm of a Chinese family of three generations. The narrative movement is reduced entirely on every day moments. A child is playing on the floor, another one is crying and stressing the grandmother who is busy with organizing the household. One after another the children, grandchildren and the in laws gathering around a big dinner table. Despite their individuality is only perceptible through small hints, one can feel there is something behind the mundane routine. It is filmed like a memory of an event we usually don´t remember at all. From outside we hear growling thunder which announces the desired rain on this hot summer day. It is a milling crowd of vitality, the excited children the stressed grandmother and the other adults exhausted and tired from work. As the film is a visualized memory no one will ever remember, there will a smell, aa change of the light or the taste of the food which will remain but detached from this very dateable day. No one remembers a siesta after a rich meal. But the detached memory of a feeling of comfort will remain.

The film offers, or in better words, celebrates small every day moments, small non-events. The history of cinema, especially through the old Japanese masters taught us that non-events are as cinematic like action, drama and movement. The longings and the dreams of these protagonists are for a moment hidden behind the very day moments. The children are absorbed by their plays like the adults are absorbed by their routine. This “to be absorbed” by mundane life by routine does not necessarily mean they are happy or even content with their life. The family dinner is a kind of consent to bring all these different characters, their dreams and ambitions together. Soon they will be busy with their own affairs. But all of them are longing for the long desired refreshing summer rain to temper the summer heat.

Films which deal with the mundane life, the non-dramatic and the non-events are always interesting. The protagonists in this film might be bored, but the view at this slice of life is always fascinating and inspiring. As life-like this film appears, it is a cinematic reconstruction of a memory which never really exist. And in all its hints to every day life, Re tian wo hou is an almost abstract film. One learns hardly anything about this family and the individual stories of all its members. But we get an idea about a whole human life and that this life not only consists of big happy or sad events but mostly non-events and always recurring every day rituals. This was already the third short film which impressed me a lot this year.

Rüdiger Tomczak