The Breaking Ice finds the warmth in young adults’ shared isolation

THE winter of Covid-19 is easing, and Anthony Chen is thawing out.

The home-grown auteur made waves 10 years ago with his debut feature film Ilo Ilo, the first and only Singaporean film to win an award at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. After a slew of shorts and a sophomore feature release, Chen has been largely silent throughout the pandemic – but he’s back this year with not one, but two films.

The first, Adrift – also his first English-language feature – debuted earlier this year to a warm reception at the Sundance Film Festival in the US. The second premiered at Cannes in May to rave reviews, and it’s easy to see why.

In The Breaking Ice, Chen takes us to Yanji – a small town in northern China a stone’s throw from the North Korean border. A young woman named Nana (Zhou Dongyu) spends her days leading tour groups with mechanical enthusiasm, competent at her routine job but harbouring no love for it.

When depressive urbanite Haofeng (Liu Haoran) loses his phone at one of her tour stops, she takes pity on him and invites him to dinner with her friend Xiao (Qu Chuxiao), a rough-edged local who carries a torch for her despite her mockery. After an alcohol-soaked night in which all three forge an unexpected connection, the trio embark on a few days of exploring Yanji together.