At times it feels like Canadian director Ashley McKenzie is setting a challenge with this: are you arthouse enough? Have you got the cinematic endurance? Her film is the story of a friendship between a neurodivergent teenager called Star struggling with her mental health, and a hospital volunteer newly immigrated from China. You could imagine it being turned into a quirky-cute odd-couple indie comedy with a superficial take on neurodivergence. Instead, McKenzie pulls us into Star’s reality, how she experiences the world. It’s a disorientating, unrelaxing two-hour experience, but rewarding.
It is set in the middle of winter in Nova Scotia, with snow up to the height of car roofs. Star (brilliantly played by Sarah Walker) has been admitted to hospital after drinking poison – not her first suicide attempt. A doctor recognises her from the last time, but Star doesn’t remember him. “Must have been in nervous breakdown mode.” She speaks in unfiltered streams of consciousness like this, eyes blank and glazed. Star has been in foster care for years; we never find out why, though she blurts out a terrible fact about her past in one scene. All the while, a jarring electronic score pings away, seeming to signal her heightened awareness of the world. On the ward, Star meets An (played by Ziyin Zheng, who uses “they” and “them” pronouns). An is an outsider, too: an immigrant from China who is exploring their gender. Something between the pair clicks. An tells Star about concubines in ancient China; this is the life An craves: “I want to be a trophy wife.”
Some might be bored or alienated by the lack of action – the camera often seems to arrive in the aftermath of an event. I found its mood hypnotic but unsettling, like having my nerves rubbed up the wrong way.
• Queens of the Qing Dynasty is released on 15 November on Mubi.
