The Chinese documentary Still Tomorrow, my first film of True/False 2017, has all the trappings of a film that examines big, important issues. It centers on Yu Xiuhua, a poet who goes viral on social media thanks in part to her frank descriptions of sexual longing. That she is a woman from rural China, trapped in an unhappy marriage, and one (to top it off), with cerebral palsy, make the set up all the more buzzwordy. Yet director Fan Jian resists the cliche path, instead crafting a narrowly focused, at times intimate, portrait of Yu Xiuhua. The film is not perfect, but it is tender and beautiful.
The precise beauty of Still Tomorrow starts with the camerawork. Fan Jian puts on a masterclass in classical framing: lots of symmetry with significant deviation at key moments. There’s a slow patience to the camera here: Yu Xiuhua walks in the wheat fields, she does chores around the house – all captured quietly but with an eye for detail. The film layers its composition, creating a depth of field that stretches the action back quite far. By contrast, when the film makes occasional forays into big cities, as Yu’s fame grows, the camera tends to hover closer in, capturing the press of urban life.
Though the film’s restrained focus feels refreshing, its actual narrative arc suffers a little. The first hour of the film works well, gradually revealing more about Yu’s life and her rising fame. But as tensions escalate with her husband, and other family troubles arise, the film stagnates a little. There’s an attempt to humanize Yu’s husband, but perhaps not enough of one to feel genuine, and the fact that her oft mentioned son never appears leaves a thread dangling over the proceedings. Most of all, though, the film seems intent on driving home the catharsis of Yu’s liberation in a way that feels at odds with the more nuanced opening sections.
Still, the film’s narrative weaknesses feel slight stacked up against the elliptical beauty of its images. Fan Jian also does an excellent job presenting Yu’s poetry. Throughout the movie, we hear Yu reading her poems out loud, set against images of her engaged in her daily routines. Then, Jian repeats the same lines in Chinese script (with subtitles for us, of course), usually over shots of nature. This repetition distills many things: the gnomic nature of poetic language, the cyclical rhythm of the seasons, and perhaps the feeling of being trapped that the film elsewhere struggles to portray. Still Tomorrow is at its best when it embraces its poetry.
