Beauty Remains

The title of Ann Hu’s debut feature, Shadow Magic, would have been just as apt for her second film, set right before the Maoist takeover of China. A young woman (Xun) raised as an illegitimate child returns home to settle her father’s will and rekindles her troubled relationship with the half-sister (Wu) she both admired and envied as a small child. The drama is routine, but cinematographer Scott Kevan makes liberal use of smoke, fog and off-kilter angles, conjuring a beautifully impressionistic atmosphere.