The Breaking Ice (Chen 2023)

The parallels to Nouvelle Vague cinema, particularly Jules and Jim, are obvious in this film about disaffected Chinese zoomers, though the intrusion of a CGI bear towards the end risks turning the story into a fable. Briefly, Haofeng, Nana, and Xiao spend a weekend together drinking, clubbing, and touring the ethnic-Korean enclave of Yanji in northern China. Everybody’s emotionally frozen, a fact underscored by the snowy landscape and Haofeng’s proclivity for chewing ice. And if Nana’s aborted ice-skating career lurches into the narrative a bit unexpectedly, pristine camerawork and youthful lachrymosity and alienation keep us interested.