The Upcoming
  • Cinema & Tv
    • Movie reviews
    • Film festivals
      • Berlin
      • Tribeca
      • Sundance London
      • Cannes
      • Locarno
      • Venice
      • London
      • Toronto
    • Show reviews
  • Music
    • Live music
  • Food & Drinks
    • News & Features
    • Restaurant & bar reviews
    • Interviews & Recipes
  • Theatre
  • Art
  • Travel & Lifestyle
  • Literature
  • Fashion & Beauty
    • Accessories
    • Beauty
    • News & Features
    • Shopping & Trends
    • Tips & How-tos
    • Fashion weeks
      • London Fashion Week
      • London Fashion Week Men’s
      • New York Fashion Week
      • Milan Fashion Week
      • Paris Fashion Week
      • Haute Couture
  • Join us
    • Editorial unit
    • Our writers
    • Join the team
    • Join the mailing list
    • Support us
    • Contact us
  • Competitions
  • Facebook

  • Twitter

  • Instagram

  • YouTube

  • RSS

Locarno Film Festival 2018

A Land Imagined

Locarno Film Festival 2018: A Land Imagined | Review
7 August 2018
Joseph Owen
Avatar
Joseph Owen
7 August 2018

Movie and show review

Joseph Owen

A Land Imagined

★★★★★

Special event

A national rejuvenation, an economic miracle, Singapore succeeds through something tangible yet perverse: it keeps making itself bigger. Neighbouring lands export sand and labour. Sovereignty is blurred, disorientating migrants and natives alike. The extension of the physical border and the fuel of virtual reality creates an uncertain imaginary: identity falters, mystery supersedes clarity, madness reigns. What happens if you are lost within?

Yeo Siew Hua’s knotty, perplexing film grasps and discards this central question, producing a deliberately sly, hallucinatory work. By combining genres – thriller, realist drama and most potently, neo-noir – the director takes us deep into murky delusion, corporate conspiracy and worker exploitation. The essential thread is aloneness, a state both intoxicating and nightmarish. It’s a lot, really.

Policeman Lok (Peter Yu) is assigned to investigate a missing persons case. Wang (Liu Xiaoyi), a Chinese construction worker, frequents an online gaming attic. Mindy (Luna Kwok), exoticised and capricious, tempts him from the screen. Ajit (Ishtiaque Zico), Wang’s emblem of pure companionship, falls into a sinister, cold-eyed, exceptional abyss. Everyone speaks as if human after the fact.

One gets the sense Lok and Kwan are looking for each other, while Mindy acts as a beguiling intermediary, a figure extracted from technology, wistful and translucent. Ajit is the touch point of empathy, cruelly smothered. Despite mobility being innate to their jobs, the characters are frustrated, fixed. Meanwhile, scenery dissolves around them.

A Land Imagined is a formal failure. The end elicits an extended shrug, a sideways glance, a benign grimace. Motivations are lost in a haze of stilted conversation. Jeopardy consoles itself in abstract visions, in computer delirium, in sick-worthy first-person shooters. Said scenes are mostly fascinating, intellectually inquisitive and thematically ambitious, but yield a dissatisfying whole. Fragmented visions offer concentrated pleasures, these contained to a booth, hooked up to a monitor. 

★★★★★

Joseph Owen

A Land Imagined does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Locarno Film Festival 2018 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Locarno Film Festival website here.

Watch the trailer for A Land Imagined here:

Related Itemsreview

More in Film festivals

Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul.

★★★★★
Matthew McMillan
Read More

“I think I’m kind of a drug addict for image and sound coming together! I’m always putting images to sound and getting high”: An interview with Hlynur Pálmason, director of Godland

Selina Sondermann
Read More

Watcher

★★★★★
Matthew McMillan
Read More

Resurrection

★★★★★
Matthew McMillan
Read More

Sharp Stick

★★★★★
Matthew McMillan
Read More

Leyla’s Brothers: An interview with Saeed Roustayi

Selina Sondermann
Read More

Plan 75: An interview with director Chie Hayakawa

Selina Sondermann
Read More

Falcon Lake: An interview with director Charlotte Le Bon

Selina Sondermann
Read More

“How to make a genuine portrait of life”: An interview with the stars of Leila’s Brothers

Selina Sondermann
Read More
Scroll for more
Tap

Movie and show review

Joseph Owen

A Land Imagined

★★★★★

Special event

  • Popular

  • Latest

  • TOP PICKS

  • The Rollings Stones give Glasto a run for its money at BST Festival in Hyde Park
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Africa Fashion at the V&A
    ★★★★★
    Art
  • Beauty and the Beast: The Musical at London Palladium
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • “He used to spit at the audience, roll on the ground, he did, in fact, hump that plastic dog – he was the original punk rocker”: Baz Luhrman, Tom Hanks, Austin Butler, Olivia DeJonge and Alton Mason on Elvis
    Cinema & Tv
  • The Princess
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Eric Ravilious: Drawn to War
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
  • Beauty and the Beast: The Musical at London Palladium
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • The Terminal List
    ★★★★★
    amazon
  • Baymax!
    ★★★★★
    disney
  • St Vincent at the Hammersmith Apollo
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Beauty and the Beast: The Musical at London Palladium
    ★★★★★
    Theatre
  • St Vincent at the Hammersmith Apollo
    ★★★★★
    Live music
  • Netflix Walking Tour: From Bridgerton to The Crown, a free walking tour through the filming locations
    Cinema & Tv
  • Africa Fashion at the V&A
    ★★★★★
    Art
  • Minions: The Rise of Gru
    ★★★★★
    Movie review
The Upcoming
Pages
  • Contact us
  • Join mailing list
  • Join us
  • Our London food map
  • Our writers
  • Support us
  • What, when, why
With the support from:
International driving license

Copyright © 2011-2020 FL Media

Locarno Film Festival 2018: With the Wind (Le vent tourne) | Review
With the Wind (Le vent tourne): An interview with director Bettina Oberli and actress Melanie Thierry