‘Gloaming In Luomu’ review: Zhang Lu delivers an enigmatic Chinese small-town mystery

Dir/scr: Zhang Lu. China. 2025. 99mins

A former dancer with a drinking problem travels to a historic town in Sichuan province to figure out what happened to her missing boyfriend in Korean-Chinese director Zhang Lu’s latest meditation on place, love and unresolved pain. Making its bow in Busan Competition, Gloaming In Luomu is less about identity and transnationalism – as much of Zhang’s work has been – and more about a group of aimless people being possessed of an aggressive case of ennui. Zhang’s background as an author gives the film its typically literary sheen but, by the same token, and despite its tranquil, liquid images, it can be inscrutable to a fault.

 Favours mood over deed

Gloaming In Luomu might stand as an exemplar of Zhang’s filmography, rolling together as it does so much of his signature narrative and thematic milieu: the poetry-obsessed pickpocket (Tang Poetry, 2003); the wandering search for answers (Grain In Ear, 2005); the picaresque (Dooman River, 2010); the small town inn (Ode To The Goose, 2018). Zhang is a familiar face on the arthouse scene in Asia and so a regional release following a strong festival performance is likely. The film could also make its mark in overseas markets, particularly where his previous films have found success, and niche streamers may also follow.

Gloaming is that time of day when it is dusk just before full dark, but it is also a good way to describe the state of mind of the characters in Zhang’s film – a group of people teetering on the brink of personal oblivion, however they may define that. First among them is Shandong native Bai (Bai Baihe, Chongqing Hot Pot, Monster Hunt), a dancer whose career has been derailed by repeated stints in rehab for alcohol abuse. Three years earlier her boyfriend, Wang, took a trip to Luomu, one of the those quaint old towns relatively untouched by developers, with cobbled streets and traditional artisans. Wang sent a postcard to Bai telling her he was “gloaming” there. It is her only clue as to his location; after that he vanished.

Bai rolls into a homey inn run by Liu (television regular Liu Dan, Reborn), a chic Harbin-born philosophy professor for whom there is no wrong time for a glass of wine and a chat about early 20th century Chinese author Lu Xun, who rose to prominence for his essays on the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement. Liu has a pair of drinking buddies, Huang (actor-director Huang Jianxin, The Battle at Lake Changjin) who works at the inn, and Peng, the local drunk. Thus, the solitary Bai winds up with an unwelcome posse on her series of low-key adventures around town on her search for Wang, echoes of whom she sees and hears everywhere.

Luomu itself is an important character to the story: a significant Buddhist site and a common destination for pilgrims and climbers hiking up nearby Mount Emei. Towering writer Lu Xun also casts a shadow; the May Fourth Movement is linked to a treaty ceding Shandong to Japan. Historical references are sprinkled throughout the film, but this time around Zhang is more focused on his characters, all somehow lost and looking for closure on unaddressed emotional traumas.

Gloaming In Luomu is very much a Zhang Lu film, which means glacial pacing and a stagey series of beautifully and meticulously composed static tableaux. Lush and evocative as cinematographer Piao Songri’s images can be, they can also be distancing in their precision. None of this is helped by a curiously mannered performance from Bai.

Indeed, Piao’s images and Zhang’s painterly touch mean Gloaming In Luomu is most affecting when it keeps dialogue to a minimum and allows the strong supporting cast, Liu in particular, room to breathe, and to unearth the film’s subtle levity. Zhang has delivered another ode that favours mood over deed, right up to the unsurprisingly enigmatic closing frames.