3.5 stars out of 5

In the dreamlike cityscape of Shanghai, the velocity of transformation assumes an almost surreal quality. Rising from the ashes of demolished working-class neighborhoods, the twin skyscrapers of Global Harbor shopping mall stand as a witness to the city's fast development and metamorphosis in the wake of the Reform and Opening Up. This Rococo and Baroque-styled consumer cathedral, conceived by the imaginative minds at Chapman Taylor, serves as the stage upon which Jiajun Oscar Zhang's directorial debut, All, or Nothing at All, unfolds its playful narrative dance.

Mirroring the mall's twin skyscrapers that punctuate the Shanghai skyline, Zhang's film weaves together two tales, All and Nothing at All, each an hour-long exploration of the human condition in this huge shopping mall. The order in which these stories are presented is left to the whims of chance, a cinematic game of coin-flipping that echoes the unpredictable nature of life itself.

In Nothing at All, we are drawn into the world of Lan Tian (Yu An), a reserved amateur filmmaker whose very name evokes the boundless possibilities of an azure sky. As he drifts through the labyrinthine corridors of the mall, his camera becomes an extension of his inner longing—an unspoken confessor that captures fleeting moments of beauty and connection amid the sterility of his surroundings. His lens eventually settles on Wu Yoyo (Xiaoyi Chen), a cosmetics counter attendant whose world is defined by the watchful gaze of her manager, Perry (Cuishan Liang). Lan Tian’s initial curiosity soon blossoms into a tentative romance, marked by the tension between his desire for intimacy and the increasingly intrusive nature of his cinematic gaze. As their relationship unfolds through daily interactions and messaging, his relentless filming begins to encroach upon Yoyo’s professional life and personal identity. When his constant recording interferes with her work, she chooses to end her relationship with Lan Tian.

In the contrapuntal movement of All, Yoyo assumes the role of a wandering observer, adrift in the fluorescent-lit purgatory of the mall. This time, her gaze lingers on Lan Tian, who has reinvented himself as a hip-hop dance instructor. Her orbit draws her into the gravitational pull of Perry, now a single mother and Lan Tian’s love interest, living in the high-rise towers above the commercial sprawl. Perry’s daughter, a student at the dance training centre where Lan Tian teaches, further entwines their lives. Despite Yoyo’s frequent visits to the studio and her quiet attempts to capture Lan Tian’s attention, he remains unaware of her presence, wholly absorbed in his relationship with Perry. Left to navigate the mall’s endless corridors, Yoyo spends her days wandering with Perry and her daughter and searching for ways to make Lan Tian notice her once more. Her story culminates in a final, desperate act—an attempt to surprise Lan Tian during a dance recital by recreating a memory from their youth.

In each story, the wandering observer remains trapped in an emotional limbo—constantly sending out feelings toward another yet fixated on a third person. In both cases, this figure is Perry, who, despite showing care for them, is herself involved in a more significant yet subtly depicted relationship with someone else. This cycle of undefined, unreceived, unsettled, chaotic and increasingly intensified affections, drifting aimlessly through space, uncertain even to those who transmit them, embodies Gilles Deleuze’s concept of affection-image and evokes the wandering emotional currents in Wong Kar-wai’s films, particularly Chungking Express.

Under Zhang’s incisive lens, the shopping mall emerges as a liminal space, neither home nor workplace, a purgatory of late capitalism where the promise of consumerist fulfilment rings hollow. Customers wander aimlessly without making purchases, cosmetics counter attendants fail to sell their products, food couriers never complete their deliveries, and singers perform to audiences who never truly listen. This sense of perpetual displacement lingers within the twin skyscrapers, their glass-domed roofs framing a stark portrait of emotional and social isolation in a world that is crowded yet profoundly disconnected. The mall’s cold, sterile architecture becomes a visual metaphor for the human cost of capitalism’s relentless march, where life is reduced to a series of missed connections and unreciprocated gestures.

The motif of voyeurism, central to Nothing at All, deepens in the film’s second half as the roles of observer and the observed are inverted. Lan Tian’s obsession with filming the everyday lives of strangers in the mall culminates in a moment of direct confrontation when a food courier asks him, "So, I'm your material?" His face, boxed in by the smartphone’s frame, extends the question beyond the narrative, addressing the audience itself through the silver screen. As the perspective shifts in All, the voyeur becomes the voyeured, further implicating us in the film’s complex web of gazes. Just as surveillance monitors loom over the mall’s corridors and eavesdropping is a constant presence in the film, we, too, are unavoidably watched—by security cameras, by the omnipresent lenses of strangers’ smartphones, by the invisible machinery of contemporary existence. In such a city space, we are as exposed as the characters on screen, subject to an anonymous gaze whose identity forever remains unknowable.

Even though the film occasionally struggles with its sound mixing, All, or Nothing at All ultimately delivers a playful yet visually striking narrative that serves as a haunting elegy for a world where affect has become unmoored from its human bearers, endlessly circulating within the impersonal networks of late capitalism. Zhang’s film stands as a powerful testament to cinema’s enduring ability to capture the ineffable currents of becoming, the fleeting and often unspoken emotions that shape our existence, even in an age of profound alienation and disconnection.

Press Imagine provided by MINT Chinese Film Festival for press use.

Visit MINT Chinese Film Festival: https://www.unicornscreening.com/