Selected for the Locarno Film Festival’s Filmmakers of the Present competition, The Plant from the Canaries is the debut feature film by the Chinese director living in Berlin Ruan Lan-Xi. Seemingly as light, poetic and delicate as a drop of rain, The Plant from the Canaries helps us understand that glances, little everyday acts and unexpected, fleeting embraces can convey far more than words. Thanks to its unusual camera angles, such as the opening frame which holds the viewer’s gaze at a distance, only allowing them to observe from afar a group of people who randomly meet in front of a restaurant, The Plant from the Canaries is both fascinating and destabilising.

After an unexpected break-up, thirty-year-old Korean woman May (Jung Hyeonsu), who’s moved to Berlin, finds herself picking up the pieces of a life she’s still learning to negotiate. Alone, as if swallowed up by the city, May moves around with apparent tranquillity in a wintery Berlin which seems emptied of its inhabitants. Soothed by an inertia which she wasn’t really expecting, the protagonist starts to think about her life and the indissoluble tie she was with her country, Korea, which she’s reluctantly decided to leave behind. The memories of her youth in Seoul are relayed to us by way of a voiceover which caresses the film’s images like a ghost.

The Plant from the Canaries is a lyrical and enigmatic portrait of a woman who’s trying to make her way in a society she’s still getting to know, a woman caught between tradition and modernity, freedom and respect for rules which, with the passing of time, seem increasingly void of any meaning. Among these implicit rules is the need to be in a relationship to find happiness, as if the emptiness inside of her could only be filled by another person. Continually in search of some sort of “soulmate” who can save her from the loneliness which is beginning to envelop her, May discovers that friendship, especially the one she enjoys with her best friend (Daria Wichmann), is far more important than an ephemeral love affair. In this sense, the film is decidedly queer, an ode to affection and tenderness unrelated to social dictates or heteropatriarchal ideals, because the person who accompanies May on her journey towards a kind of resilience is her best friend, who employs tact, empathy and her gift for listening to shower May with lifesaving moments of tenderness. The real couple in the film isn’t the one May forms with her past or future lovers, but with her best friend, a love connection which only submits to rules based on respect, listening and empathy. With The Plant from the Canaries, the director helps us understand just how important it is to observe the small everyday things, to listen and be present in human interactions.

The film uses images more than words to explore the daily life of its protagonist, treating the audience to a refreshing and poetic moment of respite from a garrulous world dominated by indifference. May is the spokesperson for those who have no intention of taking part in this grotesque farce, women who are reserved and sometimes silent but who are no less strong and fascinating for it. Women who prefer to observe rather than act, holding things inside of them out of discretion rather than timidity. The Plant from the Canaries is composed of the smaller things, tearful conversations and tender embraces, a precious film which turns weaknesses into strengths and silence into poetry.

The Plant from the Canaries was produced by the director herself, together with Deutsche Film & Fernsehakademie Berlin (DFFB), in co-production with Chickpea Entertainment.