15/06/2023 - Chinese director Jingwei Xu delves into the quiet despair of having to begin a new life as a young adult in a world that does not care about you

We rarely think about what happens after the story has ended. Once we get to the “happily ever after” point, we don’t question it – in our minds the now-established level of happiness (or sadness, or reconciliation) never changes. But Chinese director Jingwei Xu, in his debut feature No Changes Have Taken in Our Life (2022), offers a bleak vision of what happens after the coming-of-age story ends. And as the title suggests, none of it is good.

Waking up in the assembly hall after his graduation ceremony, our protagonist Ba assures his professor that he has already secured a job offer, telling him that he can’t talk long, because a friend is waiting to take him home, but he will definitely miss his university days. The friend never comes, and Ba walks home by himself, his trusty sousaphone wrapped around his body. This sets the tone for what is about to come, as, wandering the streets of a lifeless city, Ba tries to find a job or a place to sleep, always to no avail. Whenever someone asks him how he’s doing, he lies – the same way he lied about the friend and the job offer. Nothing dramatic ever happens. The city does not care for him, and he in turn keeps a distance from it. During the long hours, he has multiple strange encounters which might provide an escape from this dreariness, but Ba is set in his ways. He doesn’t even notice the absurdity around him; it is like he is still dreaming, and the whole city with him. Most of the people he meets are on the verge of sleep, the animals he comes across are phlegmatic, and there is an inherent slowness to life.

This is amplified by the film's animation style: the frames are static, the characters barely move, and the dialogue does most of the work. The crudely drawn people stand against empty, immobile backgrounds. A cat walks by gingerly while Ba asks someone for money. A mechanical fish crosses the road and gets stuck at the curb. Two people in superhero costumes fight in slow-motion and Ba, still carrying his instrument, talks to a guy who holds a cigarette between his toes. The viscous-feeling air, people’s slowed-down movements, and the snippets of what seems like a different reality all pull us into the nightmare with him. His newly acquired adult life turns out to be a quagmire with no apparent way out.

The monotony does become wearisome after a while, and the film could use tighter editing – which is a common problem for a lot of medium-length films, which are often shorts with too much padding. Despite the unnecessary detours, No Changes eventually finds its way towards an ambiguous ending. Sitting by his absent father’s window, Ba takes the sousaphone that he carried around for what were possibly days and blows into it for the first time. No sound comes out, which could be a metaphor for his desperate condition. However, this is also how brass instruments are warmed up; so maybe instead of it being his last note, it is actually his first. Maybe Ba is finally taking control of his life and – just as Jingwei Xu, who quotes his own youth as his inspiration, did with this film – has awakened from small-town slumber.