Caught by the Tides (2024) review

Director Jia digs through his own archives, snags footage he's shot over the past twenty years and tries reassembling it into a new "story": here, dancer Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao, his wife and collaborator) spends a bit of time trying to meet with her lover Guao Bin (Li Zhubin), it doesn't work out, and then during the COVID-19 pandemic, the two of them reconnect after he sees her working as a cashier in a supermarket.  While I respect the idea of incorporating previously-recorded segments to show the actors naturally aging - and also highlight the changes China has undergone in that period (including serious issues with the Three Gorges Dam) - unfortunately for the first third it consists mostly shots of singing and dancing and then, with the "newer" material, there's barely a "narrative" to speak of: a lot of the scenes don't seem thoughtfully interwoven into a unified whole, and when elderly Qiaoqiao and Bin go for a walk at the end, it's less poignant than it wants to be.  The filmmaker is only in his mid-50's, and this feels like the product of someone who thinks he's older ... or maybe masking up, regularly using hand sanitizer and avoiding crowded locations took an emotional toll on him.