Karma Police: Misery Loves Company in Shangjun’s Dreary Love Story
If love means never having to say you’re sorry, they never experienced the magnitude of betrayal between lovers in Cai Shangjun’s fourth feature, The Sun Rises On Us All, a title which reads like the more verbose echo of Hemingway’s famed The Sun Also Rises. Painstakingly paced with a two-hour plus running time, a languorous marination with a pair of reunited ex-lovers forced to confront the tragic circumstances surrounding the dissolution of their relationship often seems unnecessarily agonizing. But it also allows its two lead actors the requisite amount of screen time to elevate what reads like a tawdry slice of dime store romantic miserabilism.
Xin Zhelei (of Wong Kar-Wai’s Shanghai Blossoms, 2023) is the film’s greatest asset navigating a complex characterization as the sometimes inscrutable Meiyun. We meet her as the proprietor of a clothing store, modeling her wares on social media (which provide the briefest bits of levity in an increasingly dour narrative). Business is not exactly where it needs to be, as she’s hung up on receiving a refund from a vendor who sent her a sizable shipment of shoddy garments. While at the hospital receiving an ultrasound confirming she’s pregnant via Qifeng (Feng Shaofeng), her married lover (who had already requested she abort a previous pregnancy), she suddenly runs into Baoshu (Zhang Songwen), being treated for stage four stomach cancer. His appearance immediately unsettles her, and she later returns to the hospital to find he’s checked out. Tracking him down, it appears she’s majorly indebted to him, and he insists on staying in her apartment while he undergoes chemotherapy as one of the ways to pay her debt.
Qifeng has been receiving threatening text messages hinting someone plans to expose his extramarital affair (though the eventually revealed source suggests Meiyun would be better off not getting involved further with his personal affairs), which leads him to decide it’s finally time to divorce his wife. But he believes it’s a bad omen upon discovering Meiyun is housing her ex-lover from seven years prior, cancer or not. Flustered by this sudden scenario, Meiyun confesses to her lover that, seven years prior, she killed a man in a hit-and-run accident. Baoshu took the blame, serving five years in prison. The kicker is, Meiyun left him only a year into his sentence, claiming she was ‘overwhelmed’ by her own guilt.
As her various transgressions are revealed, Meiyun is finally forced to confront the consequences of her actions, realizing her secrets have also kept her in a state of atonement by accepting subpar conditions with Qifeng. In her rather roundabout way, she tries to take the opportunity to repay Baoshu for his sacrifice, but not in ways which are beneficial to him. The breaking point is exemplified in a claustrophobic elevator sequence in an apartment complex to seek more adequate housing so they can more easily cohabit during his ongoing convalescence. The scene is certainly on the nose, but effectively catalyzes the emotional showdown yet to come.
From a distance, The Sun Rises On Us All stuffs a staggering amount of tragedy atop its doomed lovers, suggesting karmic retribution for Meiyun sidestepping accountability. Cancer, death, precarious pregnancies, manslaughter, and a shocking moment of violence in the third act (which quite effectively breaks down the barriers of time and resentment between them) plays as if they’re characters in a soapy Greek tragedy. All of this melodrama suggests the heights of pulpy ridiculousness. And yet, the character building between these two remote, disconsolate characters captures a sense of sweet salvation one might find in a Graham Greene novel. If the sun certainly rises on us all, it also eventually sets, and to crib from Spectral Display, these two troubled lovers are going to live tomorrow if they don’t die today.
Reviewed on September 5th at the 2025 Venice Film Festival (82nd edition) – In Competition. 131 Mins.
★★★/☆☆☆☆☆
