Wuyong

The pace (close to needlessly slow at times) works against my full appreciation being given. And yet, Zhang's work takes on a moving, poetic, and socially conscious form of the kind that I never feel like time is wasted.

"Useless is a shape-shifting work that overturns expectations at every turn and leaves behind an open-ended consideration of value -- of clothing, of human labor, of human life." - Kevin B. Lee

Possibly the most interesting part of this film was how it fells like this takedown of Ma Ke. In rejecting 'fashion', she only continues the exploitation in a different way, using the 'different' lives of the downtrodden to create false memories imbued in the Wuyong clothing. The second half of the film is dedicated to showing that these people's lives don't have any room for consideration of the aesthetic quality of their clothes, or the 'memories' they're imbued with. It's just their life.

Magnificent work once again from Jia. Stringing together three narratively disparate segments as he follows his theme of fashion in China, Jia refuses to include narration, giving the film an open-ended feel, as if he wants to show the viewer the Chinese fashion industry from all angles and allow us to draw our own conclusions. In doing so, the visual echoes and graceful tracking shots lend a poetic air to the issue at hand. Beautiful filmmaking.