The title of Erica Xia-Hou’s stirring if conspicuous first feature is not a misprint: “banr,” translated and truncated from the Mandarin term for “partner,” serves as endearment, as shorthand, and as an informal address for a relationship often compartmentalized by societal expectations. But there is a solemn aspect to this truncation, too, of a signifier standing in for a time when names and memories no longer hold as they used to — we cut short the phrase to affirm its monosyllabic wholeness. Does its use, then, stem from learned, incremental affection or from a natural and visceral desperation, a term to preserve the dying mind against time? The bittersweet realization one tends to have is that we do both, with care and habit slowly coalescing into one in a partnership of commitment and devotion that ends in spite of them.
Banr depicts an old married couple struggling with health issues and a steadily deteriorating way of life. Zhang Jianjun (Li Sui), a veteran, is sole caregiver for his wife Liu Ximei (Li Baoqing), whose Alzheimer’s has burrowed into her and creepingly divested her of lucid, intentional agency. Their daughter, Yunyun (played by Xia-Hou), visits frequently but has a hectic working schedule, and her pleas for her father to enroll her mother in a care home fall on deaf ears. Jianjun is ridden with anxiety and an overwhelming sense of responsibility for his beloved, and when he’s not shopping for groceries in town or preparing meals at home, he has to tend unwaveringly to his wife. Ximei, formerly a teacher, soon becomes unable to recognize her family, or even to find her bearings — she wanders off when unsupervised, throws tantrums at her hapless husband, and places fruit inside the washing machine. Shown initially to be lucid, though aging, she even recounts the story of another woman with Alzheimer’s: “She’s the kind that momentarily understands,” she says, “but in an instant, she’s gone again.”
This crippling transience — this fleeting and tenuous grasp on reality so characteristic of the aging and senile — forms the central chord of Banr, and its intense depictions of caregiving’s woes help underscore the film’s unerring pathos. Xia-Hou, adopting a non-linear lens, foregrounds her narrative around Ximei’s declining health, flitting about time periods and locations and engineering a powerful feeling of dislocation in the process. Yet a persistent weakness (or tradeoff) ensuing from this concerns the depth of her characters: because they are defined primarily by their sickness, they sometimes are rendered more sympathetic than they are lived. Given the film’s unflinching focus on its hapless, agonizing couple grappling with inevitable decline, comparisons with such works as Michael Haneke’s Amour and Gaspar Noé’s Vortex will no doubt appear. But Banr opts for relatively few flourishes, preferring a more vérité and diaristic approach. Much could be said about its simplistic sequences, which walk the tightrope between realism and sentimental weight. But the sentiment they echo is irreproachably, achingly real.
Published as part of Slamdance Film Festival 2025 — Dispatch 1.
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