Guo Run – first-look review

In the light of Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s war on female bodily autonomy, this hushed drama from Chinese filmmaker Li Dongmei suddenly goes from being a worthwhile film to a vital one. We meet Yu (Manxuan Li) in a state of zen chill, nervous and excited at the prospect of giving birth. Yet the embryo inside her is only the size of a bean, and so she has a mountain to climb before she’s cradling a full-term baby in her arms.

Yu lives in a bright, airy apartment in an unnamed Chinese city with her boyfriend, a wannabe tech bro who appears to be drilling down into his work to avoid having to deal with the responsibilities of potential fatherhood. Rather than tend to Yu, he coils up on the floor and watches old Hollywood movies with noise-cancelling headphones on. Rather than sit with her in the park, he climbs to the top of a precarious tree and hangs there like a melancholic chimpanzee.

Li’s film is ultimately one about Yu losing her child via miscarriage, and it’s chilling to think now that there are certain places in the world where this natural – but horrible and painful – anatomical mishap might be cause for investigation or, worse, prosecution. Yu’s journey plays out with the minimum of melodrama, and the fact that she has to pay a carer to be with her for a gynaecological medical procedure suggests that she isn’t at all clear as to whether she should be feeling any kind of sadness. Through Yu’s body language, there’s a sense that she wanted a child at one point, but then it remains ambiguous as to how she feels in the aftermath.

The film comprises a series of long, slow takes, with its minimal dialogue largely intoned at the level of a faint whisper. Most of the action comes from Yu’s interactions with her young niece, who seems intrigued by the notion of having a cousin, but is also authentically brutal in the questions she poses to her aunt about the dangers of the birthing process. It is for a most part a strait-faced film, wistful and pensive in its outlook, but the niece does provide a few moments of welcome levity.

Cinematically speaking, there’s nothing here that feels particularly new or innovative, but its intimate chronicle of a miscarriage – from first signs of blood spotting to returning home from the hospital in a daze – is both unique and necessary. Though the efficiency of the Chinese health system comes off very well in the film (it’s a work approved by the state censor), there remains implicit criticism of its almost mechanical normalisation of what can be, for many prospective parents, a harrowing and hopeless moment in their lives.

The way that Yu deals with the situation in such a detached and practical manner lends the film a haunting quality, one that depicts a system which is shorn of emotion and empathy. And the revelation of the title’s meaning adds a nakedly moving dimension to the otherwise mournful proceedings.