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\n Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute\n <\/p>\n
The Korean-American director Kogonada<\/a> took a startling turn for the sentimental last year with the hopelessly syrupy Colin Farrell-Margot Robbie studio romance A Big Bold Beautiful Journey<\/a>. It was one of the bigger disappointments of 2025, especially when seen against the filmmaker\u2019s previous features<\/a>, which were models of independent-minded austerity, all subdued emotions and subtle compositions. With his latest, Zi, playing in Sundance\u2019s Next section, it feels as if Kogonada has finally unleashed all his suppressed formalist energy. The movie feels like a release valve, an artiste\u2019s penance.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a wisp of a thing, too, and I wouldn\u2019t have been shocked to learn that it had been shot over a free weekend. (In actuality, the production reportedly lasted three weeks.) It plays like a travelogue of and a tribute to Hong Kong, with stolen shots of the city\u2019s streets and markets and parks and trains, shaky images whose rough, mismatched qualities speak to the transitory nature of the characters. The extremely thin story follows Zi (Michelle Mao), a concert violinist wandering Hong Kong with an uncertain sense of where she is. A neurological condition, which may or may not be the result of a brain tumor, has her seeing visions of herself as well as indeterminate flashes of certain moments that could be from her past or her future. She explains some part of this to Elle (Haley Lu Richardson, who had her breakout performance in the director\u2019s 2017 debut feature Columbus), an American stranger sporting a spectacularly bad wig who shows some concern for her. Watching them, meanwhile, is Min (Jin Ha), a man who is somehow connected to both of them.<\/p>\n That\u2019s basically it. Oh, some emotional details do get filled in \u2014 Min and Elle were engaged for many years, it seems \u2014 but nothing that adds any genuine depth to the characters. Zi is at its weakest when it attempts conventional development and incident, and it doesn\u2019t feel like Kogonada\u2019s heart is in such exchanges either. At one point, Min kisses Elle, who recoils, and their ensuing awkward dialogue plays like a vague bit of improv, lacking anything resembling psychology or insight. (Richardson, ordinarily a fine performer, doesn\u2019t seem to have been given much direction here.) Other revelations are either underplayed or waved away, as if the director can tell they\u2019re meaningless as soon as they\u2019re uttered.<\/p>\n And yet, Zi is fascinating, at times even rapturous. In the remarkable Columbus, architecture replaced emotion<\/a> \u2014 the characters\u2019 feelings were often expressed by the angles and facades and interruptions of the modernist spaces through which they moved in the town of Columbus, Indiana. Here, the film finds itself through texture: rushed shots of late-night alleyways, wide-angles of office buildings, city lights reflected through water onto the actors\u2019 faces. Through Kogonada\u2019s eyes, even after-hours piles of garbage become luminous. Shot partly on 16mm film, often at night, the heavy grain of the images begins to feel like a memory.<\/p>\n