The film opens with three women, a mother, her daughter and her granddaughter, keeping vigil at the bedside of the husband, father and grandfather as pancreatic cancer ends his long battle. Emotions run high and loud, and the camera peers close. Then comes the quieter moment. Yue, played by Zhou Xun, tastes the pickles, knows she will never get to again, and declares it a good batch.
Gu closes his "Landscape" trilogy with this one, following his Cannes-premiered 2019 debut "Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains" and 2023's "Dwelling by the West Lake." The three films share no characters or plot, just a style of melancholic family portraiture.
The review calls the film sentimental but affecting, though the early mourning can feel overwrought and the film runs overlong. The stronger stretch watches Yue, her mother Luna (Xi Meijuan) and her teenage daughter Moon (Wang Shengdi) rebuild life around an absence. They feel relief and a faint sense of betrayal about carrying on, and they keep space for his spirit. Gu shoots it all with grand-scale elegance, using floating pans and heavily populated setpieces.