Lock Again

The films by the Chinese media artist Yang Fudong lead viewers into a mysterious, at times eerie world situated between dream and reality. The events seem suspended in time; the figures, often silent, act according to expressive gestures and poses without relaying a clearly definable story. Yang Fudong’s cinematic aesthetic is inspired in part by the Shanghai cinema of the 1930s and the films of the French Nouvelle Vague. 
In Lock Again, two men and a woman wander about in a surreal location. The men, dressed in white police uniforms, are wounded and exhausted. In some scenes, they appear handcuffed to each other. They seem to be desperately trying to escape, in vain and with no recognizable destination. Together with the mysterious woman in a pink dress, they finally row in a boat towards freedom. But in the final film sequence, the river on which the protagonists find themselves is transformed into the interior of an indoor swimming pool: the escape attempt has failed, the dream is over.