I have seen two other movies by Zhang Lu, set in Korea, with Korean actors, and I felt dissatisfied to some extent with both of them. This is the one I liked best. I guess I resonate much more with the Chinese-ness of the characters. They are more relatable in a way, they make much more sense to me. I also liked the locales, the old houses and streets. It is a bloated movie, there are scenes that could've been cut, maybe a good half hour of it. But this resonated with me, I found myself interested and drawn to some of the characters and their stories. I liked Ouyang Wenhui the least probably, unlike Park So-dam's character in Ode to the Goose. But the rest of them I wanted to know more about. Even Gu's poor renter has a pretty good scene. His sister, daughter, brother-in-law, his ex, his old school friends, his dad, his mom. I wanted more time with them instead of semi-dreamscape passages but it's ok. I'm glad I had the patience for it.

I can sense that the director will be disappointed to see the reviews. Can't I beat you guys when I'm this literary?

The overall audio-visual language is close to that of a static movie by Edward Yang, almost no soundtrack, everything in life is a soundtrack, minimalist style, even some scenes reminiscent of neorealism, but the director does not know enough to be true to this point, but chose to utilize the outside of the painting to create a surrealistic view, but the roughness of the mastery of the degree of its feeling of a slight fatigue. It's like the product of a man in his middle age deliberately trying to portray that deep, lasciviousness that makes this film, which lacks a clear color composition, seem tedious; of course you can shoot it that way, and shoot it quite well, but you have to add some meaning to it, right?

Back to the outside of the painting, when Mr. Gu comes out of the painting, we can feel its transcendence in the back, which is a kind of frame beyond Hitchcock's closed space, because he can change the wholeness of time and space. The larger frame of the outside world is expanded indefinitely, and Mr. Gu also possesses an existence beyond the "uneasiness" of this frame. He can disappear and appear when the frame leaves him. He becomes infinite.

The foot-wrapping of the old woman is stinky and long, and the part of Tian Zhuangzhuang flying a kite is quite shocking, but I don't see much political meaning in it!