“A delightful, small drama about loneliness and the perils of the online world.”

It’s quiet on the backlot of Old New East West Film Studios. It has been a long time since any production actually shot there, and it’s winter, so all the sets, from ancient temples to sci-fi buildings, are covered in snow. Zha, a janitor, is one of the few keeping the grounds somewhat in shape. He lives alone, save for an old cat with an acting career, and the few colleagues that are still around mock him. Zha may seem at peace, but his constant fiddling with stress toys tells a different story. No wonder, because pay is late. The studio head, a man whose quest for success through management self-help books hardly reflects the state of his business, announces that employees will now get their wages every three months (an improvement!). Except Zha. When Zha comes to his door to mildly complain about that, all he gets is a VR headset built into a tacky sun cap.

Back in his small apartment, Zha tries it out and enters Home Sweet Home, a virtual world where your dreams can come true. As the device scans his face to create a better-looking avatar than Zha’s tired, frumpy appearance, it comes to life on a fairground. Here Zha (Da Peng) meets a mysterious woman (Qing Yi), with whom he will start a tentative romance. As they look at the stars, she speaks of her desire to go into space, which is made possible by a commercial space program that gives the film its title. And so begins the smitten Zha’s search for money that would buy him two tickets.

A delightful, small drama about loneliness and the perils of the online world, Xu Zao’s debut Light Pillar is for the most part a beautiful, hand-drawn 2D animation. The fact that two actors are mentioned in the synopsis above already hints at something clever going on here. When Zha puts on his VR cap and enters the virtual world, he steps into a physical reality in which the actor playing him looks like his avatar. Shot in lo-res Hi8, this ‘reality’ turns out to actually be worse than the life Zha has in animated form, reflected in the ugly imagery when put up against the painterly feel of the Old New East West Film Studios world. Light Pillar‘s animation style is akin to that of Sylvain Chomet, most notably last year’s A Magnificent Life, although perhaps not as detailed and certainly not as colorful. But a world full of color would not reflect Zha’s lonely and somber life.

Which isn’t to say there is nothing in his world that can delight the viewer, but Xu mostly does this through wistful moments of humor or small scenes adding a sweet tenderness to the film, with these moments having little connection to the main story. A rat family carving a heart in the snow for the cat that saved them; Zha stepping away from a “no smoking” sign as two colleagues puff their smoke in his face; the oddity of the studio head who communicates with everybody through a microphone, even if they are standing right in front of him. There is a dry, sometimes absurdist sense of humor about the film that balances a lightheartedness with the sadness when it speaks about Zha being lonely or the dangers of life online.

Light Pillar is Xu’s debut and heralds a new, interesting voice in the world of animation, with a story that is hard to pin down by genre and unique in both narrative and execution. Xu doesn’t quite know how to wrap up the tale, getting lost in an increasingly abstract meta-story, but for the first hour and more it is utterly delightful even if it’s a bit of a “sad sack” tale. An extra post-credits scene featuring the director in the fairground setting, another meta-joke in itself, fits perfectly in this odd but charming little film.

(c) Image copyright: Fengduan Pictures