Oxhide and Oxhide II

Complete first draft written for Screen Slate.

In the glut of endless sequels and reboots that have consumed the popular American cinema, even the discerning viewer can sometimes forget the value of films that are explicitly linked together, sharing characters and continuities that enriches each individual entry. One of the finest and most radical examples of this in the 21st century is Liu Jiayin’s Oxhide series, which is currently comprised of Oxhide (2005) and Oxhide II (2009); though apparently at least eight installments have been planned, these two films comprise her entire feature film oeuvre to date. Though they ultimately strive for different ends, both Oxhide and Oxhide II occupy a similar stylistic palate. Strictly speaking, they are fiction films, but with a high degree of overlap with reality: Liu and her parents Zaiping and Huifen play versions of themselves, acting out narratives that Liu has scripted based on their experiences, largely hewing to identifiable archetypes (especially to Chinese families) within this nigh-experimental framework. These quotidian scenes play out in rigorous, exacting frames: Oxhide has just 23 shots over 109 minutes, and the even sparer Oxhide II only uses 9 shots for 132 minutes. Both are shot in handmasked CinemaScope digital that frequently obscures faces and large parts of the cramped Beijing apartment that the family lives in, the sole setting of both films. However, the tone and narrative drive of the two films is markedly different. Oxhide is in essence a character study of the father, who designs, crafts, and sells leather products. Liu tracks the slow crumbling of his pride as his business suffers a downturn, transmuting that frustration into a series of anxieties over little things: Jiayin’s height, the mixture of sesame paste, the spacing of an advertisement. Working with near absence of light, Liu etches out unexpected focal points within every hazy shot, and the ultimately despairing arc is complicated by the unpredictable frames and emotional rhythms: rancorous one moment, tender and joking the next, in a way that feels totally true to family life. By comparison, Oxhide II is almost utopian, taking the quotidian nature of its predecessor and concentrating it into a structural film. The film appears to take place in real time as the family prepares dumplings for dinner, with each shot moving 45 degrees clockwise around the crafting/dinner table until the circle has been completed. Aside from some worries about the renewal of the leather store’s lease, the film is entirely centered around this act of collective creation and consumption, offering as much time to humorous teasing and instruction as to quiet labor, often splitting the viewer’s attention into a dense thicket of three simultaneous actions. The handcrafted nature of each dumpling is always emphasized, implicitly connected to the work behind both the leather goods and Liu’s own filmmaking. Within this set space and time, the family’s existence seems to float, offering an optimistic path forward, a place where dissecting each person’s preferred method of folding a shǔi jiǎo can be the most important thing in the world.