DRAGONFLY EYES WAV D: Xu Bing. China/U.S. 81 min. Sep 12, 8 pm, TIFF Bell Lightbox 3 Sep 14, 2:45 pm, AGO Sep 17, 6 pm, AGO. Rating: NNN
Chinese visual artist Xu Bing makes the jump to cinema with a film almost entirely comprised of CCTV footage. Rather than edit the chaotic lo-res images into a collage, he’s imposed an exquisite corpse-type plot about a woman named Dragonfly who leaves a Buddhist monastery to work at a cow milking plant and a dry cleaners before getting plastic surgery to become an online personality.
Interspersed are scintillating caught-on-camera moments of a plane crash, road rage and a drowning that draw attention to the film’s construction and themes. The director even turns up to spell out ideas about fake versus real and how surveillance turns everyone into a star. That exposition is a little laboured, but Dragonfly Eyes succeeds in moments of unadulterated arthouse sensory overload, especially when Xu zeroes in on quietly beautiful and oddly coloured cityscapes, repetition, symmetrical environments and unintentionally artful framing.
