by Tim Gordon
After more than a decade since her last feature, Bends, Flora Lau returns with Luz, a visually ambitious and thematically rich film that fuses familial drama with speculative technology.
Set in two distinct locales, Chongqing and Paris, the film follows Wei, a father searching for his estranged daughter, Fa, in the buzzing chaos of China’s neon-lit streets, and Ren, a Hong Kong gallerist tending to her fading relationship with her French stepmother, Sabine. Their seemingly disparate narratives intersect in a virtual reality landscape where a mystical deer acts as a conduit for reconciliation and revelation.
Lau’s direction is confident, and the film’s production design is striking, particularly the way it shifts between cold Parisian interiors and the sensory overload of Chongqing. The VR world, built as a liminal bridge between past and present, reality and memory, is where Lau attempts her most daring storytelling—merging high-tech fantasy with emotional catharsis. There are moments of genuine beauty, aided by the performances of Sandrine Pinna and Isabelle Huppert, who bring gravitas and quiet tension to their roles.
However, for all its visual polish and conceptual layering, Luz never fully lands emotionally. The dual narratives, each rooted in grief, miscommunication, and longing, never quite cohere into a satisfying whole. The film is intellectually resonant, with ideas about memory, technology, and the parent-child dynamic, but emotionally distant. You admire the construction of the world more than you care about the people moving through it.
In the end, Luz is a film about connection that struggles to forge one with the audience. It’s beautiful to look at and thematically ambitious, but its emotional resonance feels just out of reach.
Grade: C
