The Breaking Ice

Name: The Breaking Ice
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: January 19, 2024
Duration: 97 min
Rating: 71
Cast: Baisha Liu, Chuxiao Qu, Dongyu Zhou, Haoran Liu, Ruguang Wei

2024

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Generally favorable reviews based on 12 Critic Reviews

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Movie Details & Credits

Nour Films | Release Date: January 19, 2024 | Not Rated

Starring: Baisha Liu, Chuxiao Qu, Dongyu Zhou, Haoran Liu, Ruguang Wei

Summary: In cold wintry Yanji, a city on China’s northern border, young urbanite Haofeng, visiting from Shanghai, feels lost and adrift. By chance, he goes on a tour led by Nana, a charming tour guide who instantly fascinates him. She introduces him to Xiao, a personable but frustrated restaurant worker. The three bond quickly over a drunkenIn cold wintry Yanji, a city on China’s northern border, young urbanite Haofeng, visiting from Shanghai, feels lost and adrift. By chance, he goes on a tour led by Nana, a charming tour guide who instantly fascinates him. She introduces him to Xiao, a personable but frustrated restaurant worker. The three bond quickly over a drunken weekend. Confronting their individual traumas, their frozen desires slowly thaw as they seek to liberate themselves from an icy world. [Cannes]… Expand

Director: Anthony Chen

Genre(s): Drama, Romance

Rating: Not Rated

Runtime: 97 min

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Critic Reviews

The Playlist Jeffrey Zhang

May 22, 2023

Its interweaving of powerful performances and spiritual complexity, eventually melded with local folklore, is nothing short of beautiful. Read full review

Steve Pond

May 23, 2023

Paints a rich picture of full lives using little more than pauses, glances and a frozen landscape that says volumes without speaking. Read full review

IndieWire David Ehrlich

May 22, 2023

This raw and lingeringly sensitive film resonates more strongly when it’s lost in the ice maze than when it’s tracing its steps back to the entrance. The Breaking Ice sticks with you because it doesn’t lead its characters out of the maze, it just melts down the walls between them. Read full review

Gregory Nussen

Jan 16, 2024

The Breaking Ice is fixated on intense in-between states that work to separate people from each other and from themselves, as if to say self-acceptance and love aren’t destinations so much as journeys, at once formidable and worthwhile. Read full review

RogerEbert.com Nell Minow

Jan 19, 2024

Chen is influenced by the French New Wave, and there are echoes of "Bande à part" and “Jules and Jim.” But do not let the meandering series of scenes, underscoring the characters’ aimlessness, allow you to overlook Chen's precision in even the smallest detail. Read full review

Movie Nation Roger Moore

Jan 17, 2024

Chen (“Wet Season” was his previous film) has made a movie of familiar themes and recognizable antecedents. But he offsets that by dropping us into an alien world so disorienting that little here neatly fits into a narrative box. Read full review

Fionnuala Halligan

May 22, 2023

The actors are reasonably charismatic and the film grows increasingly lovely to look at, while failing to really make a case for itself beyond the superficial pleasures. Read full review

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