A quiet study in the disappointments in life, told primarily from the perspective of a middle-aged man who is divorced from his wife, estranged from his father, and has set aside his dreams of writing poetry to become an online food critic. He develops a relationship with the much younger woman who takes photographs for him, and despite her quirky charm, we find that she's dealing with her own emotional baggage stemming from being adopted as a child. Meanwhile his elderly father who once served a year of hard labor for allegedly groping a woman on a bus, a charge he denied (and we're led to believe was untrue), has been bicycling 300km to Beijing to catch glimpses of him and his sister on their birthdays, unbeknownst to them. The man's ex-wife? Terminal cancer. His friends? They range from having multiple divorces, to being despondent over never having married, to committing suicide.
That should give you an idea for the depressing tone of the film, as all of these dreary things are slathered on rather thick. The only source of lightness is the man's adorable little daughter, who I wish we had seen more of. I don't count the manic pixie dream girl character as adding a lot of brightness because even she felt downbeat. Her character being a trope is part of a bigger problem though - these are all cliché characters, even if the performances from are all solid and feel natural. It's a shame because the film is so beautifully shot, and one I really wanted to like. I respected what it was trying to do but it felt lethargic and overlong, without really plumbing the depths of the things it played around with.
