Third Country (2017)

Just too short...

Aya, this left me with such mixed feelings! There was a whole lot I liked about this tale of a man going to Yunnan to try and find himself and of course finding love:) The visual mood and beautiful scenery of the Jade Dragon Snow Mountain massif for one. But then, you can't really have both internal and external conflicts with such a short runtime and resolve everything in a satisfying way ...or not make the plot feel a bit contrived.

I wish Qingyu and A-ren were given a chance to decide on their own what they wanted to do with their lives, before outside forces interfered. There's enough tension in a love story between a man trying to find his own path in the sudden absence of his father's strict guidance - dealing with both the unlimited freedom and emptiness that followed, and a man who has a responsibility to a tight-knit community he grew up in. The film never made it as far as choosing between tradition and love. It was more like one blockhead with prejudices against outsiders, finally found a convenient excuse to go after the person he'd been gunning for from the start.

From what I've read, this movie references an old legend of the Naxi people about Jade Dragon 'disanguo' - the guardian spirit of people in love. According to the legend, couples whose love clashed with traditional social ethics, and who found it impossible to face reality, could choose to sacrifice their lives to gain access to another living space - an ideal/dream country. Leaving aside cultural implications, this was just too short to convincingly set up such a dramatic finale. Fortunately, the ending is quite ambiguous and really depends on your own interpretation of events and the titular third country.

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