How Is Your Fish Today?

The Chinese scriptwriter Hui Rao earns his living writing soaps. His more ambitious film plans get stranded. Then he is commissioned to write a scenario. A young man in the south of the country murders his lover and travels by train to the most northerly village of China, which is shrouded in snow and ice.
Hui, who plays himself, writes in Beijing about the odyssey of this man. In the voice-overhe allows the viewer to share his artistic considerations and personal reflections. Tranquil documentary images of himself and the imaginary past and present of his leading man provide his narration with a visual basis. The writer becomes more and more intrigued by the border village where he sends the murderer and later travels to himself.
In Guo’s feature debut, three realities subtly interweave into a gripping story that ends with the silent encounter between writer and protagonist surrounded by snow and ice. Propelled forward by a powerful soundtrack, this enigmatic road movie retains a contemplative tranquillity that fades the boundaries between reality and fiction. In this way How Is Your Fish Today? appeals to the imagination and raises scriptwriting to a true art. (SdH)

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