Extremely awesome
by AlexK
"Oxhide" seems at first glance extremely familiar. A Chinese film consisting of 23 static shots should come as no surprise to anyone who has been following Asian cinema for the past three decades. After all, Liu was still a child when Hou Hsiao-hsien, and later, Hirokazu Kore-eda were turning out what have since been canonized as cornerstones of the loosely-defined "Asian minimalism" tendency. By 2005, many young directors had adopted the static, long take style, while their forebears had modified their approaches mid-career. However, Oxhide justifies itself as unique within its stylistic context and is surprisingly touching.

The film announces its charms in the first two shots. The most salient formal aspects are immediately apparent: tight framing and the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. This combination sets the "Oxhide" apart from many "Asian minimalist" films that precede it. The other half of the long take approach has typically been the long shot: situating the camera a considerable distance from the action and encouraging the viewer to scour the frame for the smallest hints of movement or narrative importance. The cramped interior setting certainly dictates the closer shot scale, but Liu turns this practical necessity into a bold restriction with the aspect ratio. At the physically prescribed distance, the DV format's natural 4:3 ratio would have allowed more space in the frame to include faces, background, or other details of the apartment. By closing the image down to a wide format, the viewer is left with very little to visually take in and is forced into a myopic concentration on whatever Liu deems relevant to the scene. The second shot announces this technique most forcefully, limiting our view to an unbalanced composition of an empty desk. The parametric set-up is strangely suspenseful: we are aware from the conversation that she is working on a computer, and the familiar printer paper tray at the top right of the frame suggest that the composition will be completed once she hits "print." This formal suspense turns into an unexpected surprise at the end of the shot, when the printer ejects red paper. To say that a four minute shot spent waiting for a printer is filled with suspense and surprise, all the while made funny and emotionally engaging by the off-screen conversation between father and daughter, is a true testament to Liu's filmmaking acumen.

The rest of the film maintains these virtues in every shot, though the emphasis shifts. Some scenes are more strictly formal, with insignificant actions and no dialogue focusing our attention squarely on visual and aural patterns. Others have less parametric interest, but provide lengthy stretches of charming, often humorous, conversation among the family. These shots fully reveal Liu's compositional ability, as the ugly combination of DV video and natural lighting are more or less overcome by the skillful arrangement of people and objects within the frame. These conversation shots are the heart of the movie, chronicling the economic fate and emotional dynamic of the family through episodic moments. Though it may seem like a nightmare from a production standpoint to work with one's parents as actors, the reality of the family dynamic makes each scene feel organic and unscripted in a way that would be much harder to achieve with professionals.

The film's narrative is only defined through these conversations and there doesn't appear to be a dramatic arc at first. We come to understand that the family is in economic trouble and that the father's pride is hurt as much by having to discount the handbags he sells as by his daughter's short stature. There are some scenes that drag on longer than necessary, but noticing these brief lapses only makes you realize how genuinely entertaining and well-paced the rest of the film is despite its austere formalism. In fact, by the end of "Oxhide," the realization of how carefully the seemingly aimless narrative was constructed comes as a surprise. After being presented with an emotionally resonant close-up of a calendar, you are reminded of the prior extended close-ups of the printer and ox leather on a desk, both accompanied by thematically significant off-screen dialogue. By the time you realize that these three close-ups demarcate the beginning, middle, and end of the film, the final scene seems as inevitable as it is touching.

Returning to my original point, I could continue comparing "Oxhide" to other films from the region (Tsai Ming-liang strikes me as a particularly good comparison on a formal level.) However, no other film I've seen really works in the same way that Liu's does. The extremely stringent stylistic approach, combined with a genuine emotional satisfaction that may only be possible to pull off so elegantly by co-starring with your parents, is truly unique and pleasantly surprising.