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The title makes it sound like a Crouching Tiger -type epic, but Andrea Segre’s slight but enchanting debut feature is a plaintive Italian drama about a Lost In Translation -style friendship between foreigners abroad: Chinese immigrant Shun Li (Tao Zhao) and her ‘poet’, a rhyming Slav fisherman (Rade Serbedzija).
Inevitably, the duo’s bond breeds resentment in their community, yet Segre never strains towards hard-hitting social realism.
Instead, this is a film of gentle contrasts rather than tub-thumping extremes, Segre striking a tone as languid as the lagoon where events take place.
