Coming Soon
BLUE SUN PALACE
2024
Director
Constance Tsang
Starring
Lee Kang-sheng
Wu Ke-xi
Haipeng Xu
Runtime
116 minutes
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For more than 30 years the Taiwanese actor Lee Kang-sheng has forged an indelible, inimitable creative partnership with filmmaker Tsai Ming-liang. Lee makes as big an impression in Constance Tsang’s BLUE SUN PALACE, which relocates him to working-class Queens.
When wayward Taiwanese immigrant Cheung (Lee) finds his life of part-time work and light extramarital affairs shattered by violence, he connects with workers at a small Queens salon, victims themselves to the indignities forced upon strangers in a strange land. But BLUE SUN PALACE is no misery showcase. Intimacy and warmth co-exist with economic anxieties and deep grief that are articulated with uncommon intelligence and understanding of how adults endure any given day. In this debut feature, awarded the French Touch Prize by the jury at the 2024 Cannes Critics’ Week, Tsang shapes an immigrant’s tale, a relationship drama, a workplace comedy, and a great New York story in one.
“Instead of leaning into trauma or misery, the filmmaker gives us complex characters who nonetheless speak very little — everything happens in their expressions, the quick flash of a twitch across a cheek when the other isn’t looking.” - Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times
“BLUE SUN PALACE’s tale is filled with quiet spaces, and the way the texture of this quiet changes over the course of the film is a testament to its power.” - Ross McIndoe, Slant Magazine
When wayward Taiwanese immigrant Cheung (Lee) finds his life of part-time work and light extramarital affairs shattered by violence, he connects with workers at a small Queens salon, victims themselves to the indignities forced upon strangers in a strange land. But BLUE SUN PALACE is no misery showcase. Intimacy and warmth co-exist with economic anxieties and deep grief that are articulated with uncommon intelligence and understanding of how adults endure any given day. In this debut feature, awarded the French Touch Prize by the jury at the 2024 Cannes Critics’ Week, Tsang shapes an immigrant’s tale, a relationship drama, a workplace comedy, and a great New York story in one.
“Instead of leaning into trauma or misery, the filmmaker gives us complex characters who nonetheless speak very little — everything happens in their expressions, the quick flash of a twitch across a cheek when the other isn’t looking.” - Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times
“BLUE SUN PALACE’s tale is filled with quiet spaces, and the way the texture of this quiet changes over the course of the film is a testament to its power.” - Ross McIndoe, Slant Magazine