Shun Li works in Rome when she is transferred to the Veneto. She lives in the city’s suburbs, near Prenestina.
But life takes her to Chioggia, a municipality in the metropolitan city of Venice whose historic centre, to the south of the Lagoon, is located on a group of small islands divided by canals and connected by bridges. It is just like Venice but is, unlike the famous city, navigable by car for the most part.
Chioggia is described poetically by Shun Li in a letter she writes to his eight-year-old son. Here the sea goes by two names, the sea and the lagoon, and the difference is considerable. The lagoon is female, calm and mysterious, while the sea is male, restless and forever at the mercy of the wind and the waves.
The photography for the film uses tones of grey, with the sea and the sky depicted in the same colour, and when the water rises, the locals equip themselves as best they can, with gangways, boats and rubber boots. Life goes on, including for Shun Li and the fishermen who eat at the Paradiso restaurant (which actually exists in Chioggia).
Shun Li spends her first day off in Venice: as she crosses over the city’s canals we get shots of the elegant façades of the buildings facing out onto them along with the Rialto Bridge.
The fog mixes the sea, land and sky, just like the feelings of men, and makes no distinctions between race. But in the most intense phase of the friendship between the Poet and the woman, the colours become warmer and the winter sea becomes more welcoming.
Shun Li pays tribute to Qu Yuan, the most important poet in Chinese tradition, floating a lantern on the waters of Vena Canal, the biggest waterway in the town. Meanwhile, Bepi the Poet, disappointed perhaps by the friendship that prejudice has put to an end, crosses the 17th-century Vigo Bridge.
Shun Li works in Rome when she is transferred to the Veneto. She lives in the city’s suburbs, near Prenestina.
But life takes her to Chioggia, a municipality in the metropolitan city of Venice whose historic centre, to the south of the Lagoon, is located on a group of small islands divided by canals and connected by bridges. It is just like Venice but is, unlike the famous city, navigable by car for the most part.
Chioggia is described poetically by Shun Li in a letter she writes to his eight-year-old son. Here the sea goes by two names, the sea and the lagoon, and the difference is considerable. The lagoon is female, calm and mysterious, while the sea is male, restless and forever at the mercy of the wind and the waves.
The photography for the film uses tones of grey, with the sea and the sky depicted in the same colour, and when the water rises, the locals equip themselves as best they can, with gangways, boats and rubber boots. Life goes on, including for Shun Li and the fishermen who eat at the Paradiso restaurant (which actually exists in Chioggia).
Shun Li spends her first day off in Venice: as she crosses over the city’s canals we get shots of the elegant façades of the buildings facing out onto them along with the Rialto Bridge.
The fog mixes the sea, land and sky, just like the feelings of men, and makes no distinctions between race. But in the most intense phase of the friendship between the Poet and the woman, the colours become warmer and the winter sea becomes more welcoming.
Shun Li pays tribute to Qu Yuan, the most important poet in Chinese tradition, floating a lantern on the waters of Vena Canal, the biggest waterway in the town. Meanwhile, Bepi the Poet, disappointed perhaps by the friendship that prejudice has put to an end, crosses the 17th-century Vigo Bridge.
The film is set in a fishing village and, as you would expect, fish is the main food item featured, both in Chinese cuisine – the manager of the bar where Shun Li works buys mantis shrimp to cook for his customers – and local cuisine – Coppe roasts bream in the open during a day of fishing.
Jolefilm, Æternam films, Rai Cinema, Arte France Cinéma
Shun Li transferred to Chioggia to work as a bartender in a pub. Here She meets Bepi, a Slavic fisherman, nicknamed “the Poet”. But the friendship between Shun Li and Bepi upsets both the Chinese and local communities and the woman decides to interrupt it for fear that it will adversely affect her 8 years old child's ability to reach her in Italy.
