雨的影子

Liu Bingye and Zhang Wenhua’s charming animation The Rain Shadow (2013) tells the tale of a little girl who conjures up a twin playmate in her imagination, with whom she experiences the freedom of exploring her village, running through brushes and swimming in the nearby lake. This fantasy is sweet, but poignant, as the little girl who dreams her companion into being has only one leg, while her imaginary self has two. Set in the ancient city of Huizhou, which looks out to the South China Sea, this animation of happy–sad longing is beautifully rendered in the tradition of Chinese silk, mural and scroll painting, coupled with a finely tuned sound design. Highly detailed, and using a number of shifting perspectives and scenes, ranging from a bird’s-eye view, to action shots and domestic interiors, The Rain Shadow encapsulates the history of Chinese painting with its representation of genre studies of the ‘village’, the ‘house’ and the ‘landscape’.