LUZ: Worlds Intertwined

by Ravi Akalkotkar

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Flora Lau’s LUZ (花明渡) follows two narratives intertwined across three distinct settings. The main storylines take place in Paris and Chongqing, both connected through virtual reality. LUZ was visually stunning and featured great acting. While I enjoyed the film and its stories individually, the VR world fell short of its potential. 

One story follows Ren (Sandrine Pinna), a daughter trying to reconnect with her stepmother Sabine (Isabella Huppert) in Paris. The other is centered around Wei (Guo Xiaodong), a father in search of a daughter he’s never met. Both stories are interesting in their own right. They contrast well with the settings of Paris and Chongqing while simultaneously being tied together by the theme of reconnecting with family. I appreciated seeing both perspectives of the parent-child relationship through Wei and Ren.

At the film’s world premiere at Sundance, Lau explained that she wanted to write a story about how technology can bring people together. Unfortunately, the virtual reality world is where the story fell apart. It neither added enough to the stories individually nor did enough to intertwine them together. When Ren and Wei eventually met in the virtual world through a game called “LUZ”, they interacted minimally with little effect on their characters.

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

I hesitate to even call “LUZ” a game since all the characters seemed to do is search for a deer across multiple worlds within the game. Every aspect of this VR world needed more world-building and a fleshed-out backstory. Multiple subplots felt ambiguous to start with and ended up going nowhere. There seemed to be a connection between the VR world and a painting by Ren’s late father without any explanation as to why. There was also an attempt to connect Wei to the painting that is too brief and disconnected from the rest of his story. Moments like these don’t add enough substance to the overarching plot, and I wish they were explored further.

Aside from that, though, LUZ is a beautiful movie. I loved seeing the neon lighting around Chongqing juxtaposed with the warmth of Paris. The way the film managed to make the VR world look computer-generated while seamlessly incorporating real people traversing it is really astounding.

With incredible performance and stunning visuals, I thought LUZ was a nice film overall. I just wish it came together better.