A Dance in Vain (2025) by Lee Hong-chi : Grief, Routine, and the Stage of Silence

Short Summary – Grief Played in the Loop

Monkey, a quiet and reserved theater stagehand, drifts through her daily routines in a sprawling city after the suicide of her boyfriend Leo in 2020. Her life, stripped of color and momentum, becomes an endless backstage performance, where she moves sets and arranges props for others while her own emotional world remains dismantled. Yearning to be heard but repeatedly told to “be grateful,” she lives in the uncomfortable silence between personal loss and societal indifference.

About movie: https://www.sicvenezia.it/en/films/a-dance-in-vain/

Detailed Summary – The Architecture of Quiet Despair

• The film opens with long, static shots of Monkey performing stage work—shifting scenery, adjusting lighting—her physical movements meticulous but drained of joy.

• Leo’s death is never shown directly but haunts the film like a ghost in the wings; his absence bleeds into Monkey’s conversations, work habits, and small solitary rituals.

• In fragmented flashbacks, we sense moments of warmth between Monkey and Leo, contrasted with the grey present. These moments arrive like brief flickers of memory before the curtain drops again.

• Attempts to articulate her fatigue are met with platitudes and dismissal—she is told to focus on the positives, a response that deepens her alienation.

• The city is presented as both vast and claustrophobic; night bus rides, empty foyers, and dim backstage corridors mirror her emotional emptiness.

• Minimal dialogue and sparse musical cues force the audience to focus on micro-expressions, silence, and the choreography of mundane tasks as a way to inhabit Monkey’s inner life.

• Lee Hong-chi avoids melodramatic crescendos—grief is not a storm but a slow, unending tide that reshapes everything it touches.

Director’s Vision – Grief in Every Frame

• Total Creative Control: Lee Hong-chi serves as writer, director, and cinematographer, ensuring a unified tone that blends realism with poetic stillness.

• Static and Observational: The camera often holds on scenes long past the point of narrative necessity, mimicking how grief stretches time.

• Refusal of Resolution: The story ends without closure, refusing to commodify grief into a neat emotional arc, reflecting the reality of loss as something lived with, not conquered.

• Backstage as Metaphor: By situating Monkey’s life in the theater’s shadows, Lee builds a visual analogy—she exists in service of performances she cannot participate in, echoing her inability to step back into her own life.

Themes – Echoes in the Everyday

• Emotional Invisibility: Society’s tendency to ignore or diminish expressions of emotional exhaustion, especially in women, is a central thread.

• Grief as Repetition: The repetitive backstage tasks become a visual metaphor for how grief recycles itself in daily routines.

• Theater of the Mundane: The stage is never the main show—Monkey’s own quiet suffering is the unacknowledged performance, existing behind the curtains of everyday life.

• Urban Isolation: Despite constant movement through crowded spaces, Monkey remains emotionally adrift, underscoring how loss isolates even within community.

Key Success Factors – Art That Lingers in Silence

• Cici Wang’s Performance: A masterclass in restraint, her ability to convey pain through posture, breathing, and glances invites the viewer into an almost wordless intimacy.

• A Singular Filmmaker’s Voice: Lee Hong-chi’s control over all major creative departments produces a cohesive, deeply personal cinematic language.

• Minimalism as Strength: Sparse sets, subdued lighting, and silence are used not as budgetary constraints but as deliberate aesthetic tools, pulling focus to what is unspoken.

• Cultural Specificity with Universal Reach: While rooted in an urban Asian setting, the emotional truth of the film transcends geography.

Awards & Festival Premiere – Venice Bridges to the World

Premiered as a special screening in the Critics’ Week (Settimana Internazionale della Critica) at the 82nd Venice International Film Festival (August 27 – September 6, 2025). International distribution is managed by Parallax Films, which joined the project ahead of its world debut. Its Venice slot positions it for further festival circulation, art-house distribution, and potential award recognition in international cinema circuits.

Critics Reception – Previews Praise the Stillness

Though full critical reviews are pending after Venice, early festival buzz and cinephile discussions highlight the film’s emotional rawness and refusal to offer conventional catharsis.On MUBI, early watchers have described it as “beautiful, interesting, incredible cinema,” noting how it resists narrative urgency in favor of letting the audience inhabit grief’s slow rhythm. The minimalism has been framed as a bold choice that could divide mainstream audiences but resonate deeply with those seeking art over plot.

Release Date on Streaming & Theatrical – Awaiting the Next Act

No confirmed general release date yet. With Parallax Films handling sales, a staggered rollout is expected—starting with European and Asian art-house theaters, followed by specialty streaming platforms. Given the festival positioning, it may also see extended festival runs into 2026 before wider access.

Why to Recommend Movie – Quieted, Yet Seared Into Memory

• Offers one of the most nuanced cinematic depictions of grief in recent years.

• A work of extraordinary restraint, rewarding viewers who value emotional authenticity over traditional narrative beats.

• Uses theater’s backstage world as a fresh metaphor for invisibility and unspoken pain.

• A rare example of total creative authorship, giving the film a distinct and uncompromised voice.

Movie Trend – Loss Rendered in Loops of Daily Life

Part of a growing trend of meditative films where grief is expressed through the monotony of everyday actions, echoing works by Chantal Akerman and Tsai Ming-liang in their use of stillness and repetition.

Social Trend – When Sadness Is Too Tired to Speak

Reflects a cultural shift toward allowing silence and slowness in the conversation around mental health, challenging the demand for quick recovery or performative resilience.

Final Verdict – A Whisper That Digs Deep

A Dance in Vain refuses spectacle, choosing instead to sit with grief until the audience can feel its slow, unrelenting weight. Lee Hong-chi has created a cinematic space for stillness, where the act of watching becomes an act of listening—to what is not said, but deeply felt.