CLOSING TIME

At first, it’s all just fragments and sensations. The silhouette of a man in the distance, fishing. A violent wind shaking trees. And the quiet calm of the night, giving way to a cook’s methodical work, filmed in close-up and edited at a pace as languid as a hot summer night. Closing Time is a captivating work which documents the life of the owner of an all-night restaurant in Taipei. The restaurant is a place for work, random encounters, loneliness. The film transfigures reality, the better to capture the essence of life spent under harsh industrial fluorescent lights, and stopping to notice the slightest deviations from routine. Closing Time seems inspired as much by Wong Kar-wai as Chantal Akerman. A poetic meditation on a present that tends to elude us. (BD)