17/08/2026 - Past Locarno prizewinner Nelson Yeo shoots for the moon with this modernised wuxia spin on the Chinese myth of Chang’e

One of many returning faces at Locarno this year, in a line-up that has eschewed the festival’s usual focus on debut features and discoveries, Singaporean director Nelson Yeo has at least returned with a radically different offering than his still-innovative last feature, the merman tale Dreaming & Dying, winner of the 2023 Filmmakers of the Present Golden Leopard. Despite a few instances of striking location work, he’s largely decamped to virtual production facilities for his sci-fi wuxia spectacular The House on the Moon, a shooting method that first became prominent for its ability to produce IP-driven Disney+ streaming shows on the cheap. An “elevated” wuxia (Chinese for “martial arts and chivalry”) inspired by artsy, big-budget Hollywood films such as the recent Dune series, and Robert Eggers’ authenticity-driven period horrors, The House on the Moon is a bold second feature from Yeo, fully deserving its main competition upgrade this year, although its technological bloat and heavily flawed screenplay eventually get the better of it.

The myth of the moon goddess Chang’e and the Legend of the 10 Suns is one of the most formative in Chinese culture, prevalent in many of the country’s religions and philosophies, and inspiring the Japanese anime icon Sailor Moon. Yeo and co-screenwriter Vicky Yang offer a revisionist take, imagining the aftermath of her immortality and exile to the moon, once her husband, the archer Hou Yi, destroyed the nine suns that were scorching the Earth to extinction (and leaving one sun left: our own). Here transliterated in the subtitles as Chang-Er, and played by Lim Shi-An, the goddess is seen in a perennially melancholic state, consigned to the moon for over a thousand years; furthermore, Hou Yi (Dominick Rustam) has abandoned her on a new quest to save the last remaining sun, which is dying in a state resembling the endgame of our actual climate emergency.

Yeo’s stated ambition here is to provide more depth to characterisations which are necessarily shallow in the old texts, but he saddles each of the key figures with strange arcs that distract from the overall story, and are summarily dropped once we reach the foreshadowed climax, on what’s known diegetically as the Dark Side of the Moon – surely an intentional Pink Floyd double entendre. Chang-Er finds her affections falling on the Nanyang Bandit (Akira Huang), an astronaut character joining her, who carries a severed arm as a “backscratcher” and is her companion to foil various picaresque foes, such as the love god Yue Lao (a stunt-cast Lee Kang-sheng) and a witch who magically ages her by several decades – an episode comparable to one in The Odyssey. Meanwhile, Hou Yi’s original foe, Peng Meng (Harry Chang), is involved in a tragic queer romance that, whilst being an intriguing modern update, doesn’t meaningfully complement or cast new light on the primary plot strand.

Still, those virtual production backdrops are industry standard for a reason; the director and his DoP, Lincoln Yeo, cannily create intricate high-depth-of-field compositions, achieved with an unusually long focal length, which makes his lushly outfitted characters look suitably monumental. The digitally rendered backdrops are also of a more artful and carefully coloured standard – with their blinding orange infernos and volatile greys – than other soundstage-created films. With these strengths and drawbacks, one feels Yeo endearingly grasping to reinvent the fabled wuxia genre, although full success eludes him. 

The House on the Moon is a co-production by Singapore, Taiwan, Germany and Indonesia, staged by Momo Film Co in collaboration with Aview Images, Weydemann Bros, 9lb films inc and KawanKawan Media. Its international sales agent is Parallax Films.