Luz

Watched at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.

Flora Lau's exploration of how technology can impact relationships and the concepts about VR in the Chinese landscape is flawed, yet, it's gorgeous camerawork, beautiful visuals, and interesting atmosphere offers a creative insight to the characters and atmospheres.

Lau explores two storylines that intertwine together which are explored pretty well throughout. Topics ranging about relationships and the world of VR is interesting and despite some strange pacing and writing that does suffer a little bit from lack of realism, it does have good moments. The performances are pretty good throughout and there are breathtaking visual moments that are wonderful. There are some dialogue moments that felt a bit too silly, but it didn't fully distract the engagement away.

Flora Lau has the potential of making pretty interesting Hong Kong flicks in the future and despite the movie being flawed, I would love to see her make more movies and see what comes next.

Flora Lau explores the way human intimacy intersects with technology through the dream-like virtual reality world of "LUZ". Set across Chonqing, Hong Kong, and Paris, the film is saturated with hues that complement the personalities of each of these vibrant cities. LUZ weaves together the fragmented lives of its characters in a way that is both profoundly intimate and visually breathtaking.

The parallel storylines of a father searching for his estranged daughter and a daughter attempting to aid her ailing stepdaughter is profoundly intimate. I left the theater with a renewed sense of what it means to heal frayed family relationships. Each of the cast members displayed a distinct character that jumped out through the screen. Isabelle Huppert perfectly captures a c'est la vie mindset when her character is faced with terminal illness. Meanwhile, Sandrine's performance as a concerned yet aloof stepdaughter is conveyed through her unique chemistry with Huppert.

Benjamin Echazarreta's cinematography swiftly transported me between surreality and reality in my seat at the theater. The ending scene set in Chongqing left me both devastated and strangely hopeful. Overall, LUZ serves as a meditation on memory, a love letter to lost connections, and a reminder of the unbreakable threads that tie us to one another, even across time and space.