Oxhide II

Director: Jiayin Liu

2009 / 132min / DCP

Liu’s follow-up to her lauded debut returns to the same scene as that film—her family’s cramped Beijing apartment—and finds her once again acting opposite her parents, playing scripted versions of themselves, but here Liu goes even further in her rigorous observation of the intimate details of quotidian existence. Her sophomore film limits itself to the meticulous observation of the domestic ritual of preparing a dinner of dumplings, arranged to give the appearance of unfolding in a single take and, within its chosen confines, offering a supremely nuanced study of family dynamics. “A masterpiece. Inventive, quietly virtuosic.”—David Bordwell