Love Emerges from Loss in Constance Tsang’s Directorial Debut
A woman sits at a table carefully chewing small bites of meat, flashing furtive smiles at someone just out of the camera’s view. “What are you thinking about?” she asks. Pan to her dining companion: “Nothing—you have something on your lips, let me wipe them.” A laconically intimate conversation follows in a four-minute-long take, the camera flitting between the woman, Didi (Haixpeng Xu), and the man, Cheung (longtime Tsai Ming-liang collaborator Lee Kang-sheng, taciturn and magnetic), sitting in a brightly lit, deserted restaurant. Laughter follows tears, napkins fly out to wipe mouths as the conversation moves between emotional revelation and culinary commentary before transitioning to a tender karaoke bar duet. The lovers’ tense delight in this fraught opening scene establishes the tone for the providential passions and lost loves that mark BLUE SUN PALACE, Chinese-American writer-director Constance Tsang’s poignant debut feature, opening its U.S. release on April 25 at Metrograph on the Lower East Side.
Newly formed friendships appear provisional and scarce in the film. At the same time, this relational looseness allows an openness to new bonds: we see characters connect in unexpected ways that allow them to generate different dreams and imagine new lives, even as they move through parallel sorrow. While each audience member might relate to the themes of grief and reconstruction that this film delicately traces, it also deftly exposes that the struggle to rebuild one’s life as an immigrant is a uniquely fragile one, far away from one’s home, mother tongue, and kinship networks. Tsang’s subdued, sparing script subtly transmits the complexity of the characters’ complicated situations, allowing the deep blues and greys of each shot to unfold as though in a dream.
The story is intimate, oneiric, and slow-paced in ways that echo Tsai Ming-liang’s work, shot in hypnotic long takes on Kodak film by cinematographer Norm Li, but its rhythm is defined by labor, particularly women’s labor, as the narrative weaves in and out of a Flushing massage parlor and the stories of the immigrant women living and working there. Didi and Cheung’s romance unfolds overnight in her workplace, which doubles as her home. They spend the night in her narrow room, separated by curtains from her coworkers, similar to the massage rooms used by clients. The billowing curtains in the women’s close quarters blur the boundaries of work, home, intimacy, and confinement, which are in tension throughout their lives.
The massage parlor, like the film’s plot, is propelled by the determined, dauntless Didi, the masseuse-manager who confronts every financial and (primarily male) customer-related obstacle with energy and grace, inspiring her coworkers’ trust and respect. Exploring the mechanisms of massage parlor sex work, we see a prominent sign on the door: “No Sexual Services.” In the scene that follows, however, Didi and her American male client wordlessly agree on a “happy ending,” a service that Didi matter-of-factly provides and collects the payment for. At the cash register, another American client approaches to pay, but instead of the agreed $100 sum, he shortchanges Didi and quickly leaves the salon. Taiwanese Amy (Ke-Xi Wu), Didi’s closest friend and coworker, is shocked and moves to run after him. Didi stops her, urging caution: “If you keep that up, you’re going to get hurt.” It’s a visceral glimpse into the gendered and racialized realities of the massage industry, demonstrating both the women’s wits and vulnerability.
The four coworkers, all Chinese-speaking immigrants, converge for daily meals elaborately prepared by Amy, who dreams of being a chef. Amy and Didi are saving up to open a restaurant in Baltimore, where Didi’s young daughter and aunt reside. However, midway through the film, as New York’s largest Chinatown celebrates Lunar New Year, disaster strikes. This narrative caesura reveals the dual fragility and resilience in the massage parlor’s ecosystem: even when grieving alone, the women continue to work and manage the salon together.
Structured around the central loss of a loved one, BLUE SUN PALACE investigates the experience of immigration: a separation, a reimagination, a rebuilding. Enveloping the universal human experiences of loss, Tsang has created a deeply felt visual chronicle of quiet, radical transformation—a tender, bittersweet directorial debut.
BLUE SUN PALACE has its U.S. release on April 25 at Metrograph, 7 Ludlow Street, 1002, NY, NY and will play through May 4, 2025 with four Q&A’s throughout its run. Reserve your tickets.
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