It is brutally unfair that Thierry Frémaux programmed “Resurrection” on day ten of the Cannes Film Festival when we, the remaining press foot soldiers on the ground, are holding onto our critical faculties by a hair. To say that this film is impenetrable is an understatement. It feels for long stretches like the fourth film by Chinese experimentalist Bi Gan has been designed to lock us out of our own brains, forcing us to wade through the treacly sludge of bored incomprehension amidst the nagging suspicion that we are not so cineliterate after all.
The film opens in a playful and straightforward manner, before launching into a digressive metatextual sprawl that I cannot in good faith claim to have grasped. In the absence of being able to confidently frame this film, all I can do is describe it and hope for the best.
Gan lulls us into a false sense of familiarity with an opening built on flamboyant silent cinema techniques. Dramatic piano chords are stuck alongside sepia title cards that are pleasantly full of exclamation marks. Like in a Guy Maddin film!! These title cards describe a parallel universe where nobody dreams any more except for the fantomes. Dreams turn fantomes into monsters because holding onto illusions makes reality too painful. One fascinated woman is seeking the fantome hiding in the forgotten past in order to bring him into the future. Sure, why not. You gotta try that at least once.
Resembling a cross between Nosferatu and Uncle Fester, the monster first appears with a tray of poppies at an opium bar. The woman shows him how ugly he is by compelling him to look into the mirrored surface of her eye. (Mean!) He flees in shame and she takes off after him through a German Expressionist film set, all shadows and angles and puffs of smoke. So far, so caper-tastic.
As will be his fate across all mediums and timelines, the monster becomes bloodied and vulnerable. Not a natural caregiver, the woman carefully loads 35mm film into his head. Now we’re in a film noir and the monster is a beautiful, baffled young man contending with some nasty scratches across his torso. This is where plot particulars become over-involved and difficult to parse. The monster is under investigation because he hurt a man in self defence. A suitcase holds significance. The lead detective is out for the monster’s blood. In the absence of discernible narrative tracks, there is always the image. These are blue tinged, rainy, full of smoke and mirrors. In a stand-out scene, the detective shoots at the monster in a roomful of mirrors and only succeeds in shattering his reflections. Is this a reference to Orson Welles’ “The Lady from Shanghai” or am I reaching for a reference to regain my lost sense of authority as a film writer?
Well, it’s about to happen again.There is a flavour of Mark Cousins’ “The Story of Film” and Jean Luc Godard’s “Histoire Du Cinema” to this portmanteau of film eras and styles — with a few crucial distinctions. There is no narrator to steer and soothe our souls. And instead of clips from existing films, Gan has shot new material for “Resurrection” in the style of the era they mimic. Furthermore the sequences he unfolds are not clips but long, involved, stories hinting at unknowable worlds beyond. We are dropped into something without the means to orientate ourselves or know what we should be seeking to understand.
Before one can grapple with why everyone is against the monster in this timeline, now, for some reason two men are having a long conversation in the snow and one man has bashed out his tooth because it contains the spirit of the other. Does that sound right? What does this have to do with fantomers? Who is that small boy wearing a blindfold?
It is not easy to say whether the turgid arcs within each micro story is a choice or an oversight. Bi Gan proves himself review proof. If you can’t identify a film’s intention how can you review whether it pulled them off or not? Is Bi Gan forcing us to confront and interrogate the desire to emotionally connect with film characters? Or has he simply not thought any of this through.
It continues — oh how it continues. After spending an interminably long time with several men in a film aesthetic too bland to be pinned to a genre, we’re in a neon drenched vampire story. There’s a whole new gang that the camera seems intimate with — can they really all be strangers? Are we supposed to know them from another timeline? Does any of this matter?
Back to the image. Violence is a constant. Bloodshed is a constant. Smoke and rain and loose ends are a constant. The brain wants to situate the images in a structure or find an internal pattern but all there is is chaos and there is no reality to root for. Is this a life without dreams? Was this Bi Gan’s point all along? Is this impressive, boundary-pushing, experimental cinema or an endurance test with no internal logic where the chief pleasure is leaving the theater afterwards? Could it be both?
Grade: C+
“Resurrection” premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.
