“Combining the enigmatic manner and lush visual stylings of Wong Kar-Wai with a number of classic film noir tropes, this works both as a thriller and as a character study and shows Shipei to be a director with a lot of promise.”
— Peter Sobcynski, eFilmCritic.com
“A feast for the eyes…there’s a lot to love in this debut”
— Jack Cameron, One Room with a View
“The unlikely presence of Guangzhou, steamy by day, gritty by night,
and the shifting viewpoints on the accident add an engaging originality.”
— Kate Taylor, The Globe and Mail
SYNOPSIS
One dark night, AC repairman Wang Xueming (Eddie Peng, The Rescue) hits a pedestrian with his van, panics and flees the scene. Tormented by the accident and desperate to escape his feelings of guilt, he approaches the widow, Mrs. Liang (Sylvia Chang) and strikes up a relationship. Meanwhile, her husband’s body is discovered — riddled with bullets. Though he’s determined to piece together the complete events of that fateful night, Wang is also being stalked by a shadowy killer (Lu Xin) who spotted his van at the site of the hit-and-run. To complicate matters further, the detective in charge of the investigation, Chen, becomes obsessed with the case. Years later, the trio remain trapped in a tangled web of memories and lies, desperately searching for a truth that refuses to be revealed.
Unveiled through a mix of memory, flashback and narration, Director Wen Shipei makes an impressive debut with this short neo-noir thriller set in Guangzhou in the 1990s. Nominated for a Camera d’Or at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, it was also an Official Selection at the Toronto International Film Festival.
DIRECTOR BIO: WEN SHIPEI
Wen Shipei is a Chinese writer and director. With a background in journalism and commercial production, he attended the graduate film program at Columbia University where he studied directing and screenwriting. After directing the short films Mr. Dodson (2015) and A Short Film About Nothing (2016), he made his directorial debut with the feature, Are You Lonesome Tonight? (2021) which was invited to the Special Program at 2021 Cannes Film Festival and 2021 Toronto International Film Festival.
ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT? (2021)
Directed by: Wen Shipei
Written by: Zhao Binghao, Wang Yinuo, Wen Shipei, Noe Dodson
Cast: Eddie Peng, Sylvia Chang, Wang Yanhui, Jiang Peiyao
Produced by: Hu Jingxuan, Wang Jing
Executive Produced by: Ning Hao
Cinematography by: Cederic Cheung-Lau, Han Xiaosu, Heng Zhang,
Andreas Thalhammer
Genre: World Cinema/Drama
RT: 95 minutes
Aspect Ratio: 2.39: 1
Sound: 5.1 Dolby Digital & 2.0 Stereo
Language: Chinese with English Subtitles
