'Suburban Birds' Review: A Spectacular Directing Debut

In the opening shot of “Suburban Birds,” the spectacular feature-directing debut of Qiu Sheng, there’s a blurry-edged circle inside the square frame, a far-off cityscape in the distance. A man eventually comes into frame, and the view swivels. The effect can be taken as a reflection of the viewer’s own eye, with the sharp center representing the pupil, and the blurred portion the outer iris.

We soon learn the view is through a surveyor’s level. While the director’s camera does not peer though that device again, the perspectives in this movie shift subtly but distinctly from adult’s eye view, to child’s eye view, to a hushed omniscience and back.

A crew of four male engineers are taking measurements on the outskirts of a growing Chinese city. The area seems to be plagued by craters, or sinkholes — it’s hard to say. The men don’t discuss the work in much detail. One of them, Hao (Mason Lee), initiates a sexual relationship with a female resident of his hotel, Swallow (Lu Huang). Alone one afternoon, he enters a suburban school through a window. The movie initially gives no clues as to why. Inside, he rifles though a desk, and finds a journal.

The film’s scenes then begin to follow the journal’s dates. Its world is now one of school children, including a small boy, also named Hao (Zihan Gong). The kids aren’t terribly engaged in their school work, and like to wander nearby woods looking at birds. They don’t have cellphones, and when one of them doesn’t show up to school one day, the others don’t have access to any present-day tools that might help them find his house. It’s therefore reasonable to infer that their storyline is set in the past. But as the film goes on, it’s harder to be sure.

At a certain point, the kids come across the four surveyors, all improbably napping in tree shade, and one of the kids puts a wad of gum on the lens of a level. The movie keeps visiting the adult Hao, whose relationship with Swallow suffers because of her drunken behavior.

Qiu shows remarkable facility as he patiently adds layer upon layer to a mystery that wants to stay one. This is not a puzzle film, but its ends are elusive. Its observations on the expanding cityscapes of China recall the work of Jia Zhangke (“Ash Is Purest White”), while its near-mystical quietude has accents one recognizes in the films of Apichatpong Weerasethakul. But Sheng is also very clearly his own artist, and this movie is an assured debut.

—

Additional Information:

‘Suburban Birds’

Not rated. In Mandarin, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.