‘The Breaking Ice’ Review: An Unusually Even-Sided Love Triangle Gently Thaws a Winter of Discontent
variety.comJessica Kiang Over the course of his first three features — “Ilo Ilo,” “Wet Season” and this year’s “Drift” — Singaporean director Anthony Chen has developed a signature style.
It is a graceful, lucid classicism, a mode that in its straightforward sincerity is not fashionable in our abrasive moment, but can yield significant satisfactions.
That is certainly true of his second film of 2023, “The Breaking Ice,” which describes, in a trio of perfectly judged performances, the burgeoning, momentous and yet fleeting connection between three differently lonely people — a love triangle with rounded, snowdrift corners.
Yu Jing-Pin’s lovely photography contrasts wintry wides and warm close-ups, as writer-director Chen carves out three characters against the frozen landscapes of Yanji, a small Chinese town in shouting distance of the North Korean border.
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