{"id":665489,"date":"2026-11-03T09:50:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T09:50:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/665489\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T09:50:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T09:50:09","slug":"a-student-his-dorm-manager-and-a-forbidden-bond-in-tokyo-contender","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/665489\/","title":{"rendered":"A Student, His Dorm Manager and a Forbidden Bond in Tokyo Contender"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tChinese director Wang Jiangyong keeps the camera at a distance in his feature debut \u201cThe Night That Binds Us<\/a>,\u201d which world premiered in competition at the Tokyo International Film Festival<\/a>, observing the uneasy connection between a college student and an older dormitory manager.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think you have to show the painful parts truthfully for the moments of light to move people,\u201d Wang tells Variety.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film adapts a short story of the same name by Zhang Chu, a winner of the Lu Xun Literary Prize, one of China\u2019s top literary awards. It follows Sun Guofeng, whose parents\u2019 arrest on suspicion of fraud leaves him adrift in Shanghai, and An, the dorm manager who is grieving her daughter\u2019s death and the collapse of her family. Wang says the original story\u2019s image of a dorm manager dancing stayed with him and helped convince him to bring the story to the screen.<\/p>\n

\n\tWang spent a year developing the script, keeping what he calls the source story\u2019s \u201cpain of alienation and fragile beauty of a forbidden connection.\u201d He added characters including Guofeng\u2019s girlfriend, Yezi, and his roommate, Ale, expanding the story into a relationship among the three.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe space is a container for the characters\u2019 emotions,\u201d Wang says. \u201cThey begin in separate areas, then gradually become willing to enter each other\u2019s space.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWang says he wanted the characters\u2019 inner lives to show in their surroundings: the cold dormitory, Shanghai\u2019s damp rainy season, shifts in light and the distance between people in a room. An\u2019s cramped duty room becomes her refuge, while the empty campus during the holidays reflects Guofeng\u2019s uncertainty.<\/p>\n

\n\tWang relies on fixed long takes and keeps close-ups to a minimum. He wants the camera to feel like \u201ca quiet observer,\u201d leaving audiences to form their own opinions about the relationship. The characters\u2019 shifting positions in the frame and gradual changes in shot size carry much of the emotional movement. Only in the final long take does the camera follow Guofeng.<\/p>\n

\n\tHu Ling, who plays An and whose credits include Lou Ye\u2019s \u201cSummer Palace,\u201d says she was in tears the first time she read the script. Liu Xingsheng, an older schoolmate from film school, recommended her to Wang, and she sent the director a video of herself reading the script through tears.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI started acting at 15 and then took a 10-year break. I\u2019ve been through a lot myself. This script convinced me completely and made me want to bring An to life,\u201d Hu tells Variety.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor An, her child matters even more than a man. I wanted to keep her grief understated, like someone whose heart has gone numb,\u201d she says of her discussions with Wang about how much emotion An should show.<\/p>\n

\n\tHu and Wang also agreed that An and Guofeng\u2019s bond should not be played as a romance. She says she and actor Tan Zuhong, who plays Guofeng, kept their distance off camera as well, remaining courteous colleagues on set.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMore than my character, I think Guofeng\u2019s alienation will resonate with people today,\u201d Hu says. \u201cHe comes from elsewhere to make a life in a big city, and that feeling of being out of place runs through the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tProducer Zheng Ruoxing says Japanese culture tends to make personal distance more explicit, \u201cso the film may be especially easy to understand here.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tZheng says the Hong Kong-France co-production came together early in development, when the filmmakers met partners at a project market. After reading the script, those partners connected with the characters\u2019 circumstances and joined the project.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film took nearly a decade to complete. The 2023 shoot lasted 28 days, but editing took three years and went through dozens of versions. Wang says he and producer Zhang Ming, director of 1996\u2019s \u201cRainclouds Over Wushan,\u201d repeatedly removed explanatory shots, trying to find a rhythm that left more room for viewers to read the characters.<\/p>\n

\n\tZheng says she and Hu watched Wang\u2019s final cut for the first time together at the film\u2019s world premiere in Tokyo.<\/p>\n

\n\tWang\u2019s experience as Zhang\u2019s assistant director taught him to trust what happened on set. He did not plan every camera position in advance, instead rehearsing with the actors and letting the staging develop from their interactions with one another and the space. His editing experience, he says, helped him know which shots each scene needed and avoid filming unnecessary material.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter completing his first feature, Wang says he has become more convinced that filmmaking often depends on what a director chooses to leave out. His next script is still in development. He plans to keep writing about ordinary people and complicated relationships, while exploring new approaches to film language.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Chinese director Wang Jiangyong keeps the camera at a distance in his feature debut \u201cThe Night That Binds…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[146,85,46,397,299669,1776],"class_list":["post-665489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-movies","tag-the-night-that-binds-us","tag-tokyo-international-film-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}