Time in the Flesh: A Queer East Correspondence

Tem­po­ral­i­ties of Grief

By Soumya Sharma

What hap­pens when the past doesn’t leave but lingers – qui­et, unre­solved, and heavy? At Queer East 2025, grief and mem­o­ry seemed to haunt not only the nar­ra­tives but also the struc­ture of the films them­selves, writ­ten into their pac­ing, silences and rep­e­ti­tions. In Wang Ping-Wen and Peng Tzu-Hui’s A Jour­ney in Spring, mourn­ing is deferred, stretched and avoid­ed through the rigid res­o­lu­tion of a man who con­tin­ues to live accord­ing to his dai­ly rou­tine along­side his wife’s deceased body, in denial of her death. In Aki­hi­ro Suzuki’s Look­ing For An Angel, the film traces the life of a young porn star who died vio­lent­ly through rec­ol­lec­tions from those who knew him. In the for­mer, grief is shaped by the qui­et ache of los­ing a life­long part­ner who had become insep­a­ra­ble from one’s own self; in the lat­ter, it is mould­ed by a future that could have been, cut short before it could be ful­ly expe­ri­enced. Both are shaped by the unre­solved weight of absence; yet one mourns the end of a shared life­time, while the oth­er con­tends with the bru­tal­i­ty of era­sure. What emerges is a sense of emo­tion­al haunt­ing, as char­ac­ters grap­ple with a grief-induced rup­ture in the tem­po­ral­i­ty of every­day life. 

Set in a lush green rain-soaked hill­side just beyond Taipei, A Jour­ney in Spring unfolds in a qui­et, tra­di­tion­al home, seem­ing­ly untouched by moder­ni­ty. Khim-Hok (King Jieh-Wen), an age­ing, con­ser­v­a­tive man, and his wife Siu-Tuan (Kuei-Mei Yang, known for her icon­ic role in Vive L’Amour) ven­ture up and down the moun­tain into town to com­plete errands before return­ing to their seclud­ed abode. Their domes­tic life is punc­tu­at­ed by bick­er­ing and brief men­tions of their estranged queer son. When Siu-Tuan sud­den­ly dies, Khim-Hok places her body in a freez­er, unable to con­front her pass­ing, and con­tin­ues with his days as if she were still there. Much of his emo­tion is with­held; he fix­es the plumb­ing, gets a job at a noo­dle shop, and sits in silence by him­self. One of the few moments where his rou­tine fal­ters comes when he opens the freez­er to add more ice. He stops, looks at her, and reach­es out ten­der­ly to touch her face. The close-up cap­tures her fea­tures through the soft tex­tures of the film’s 16mm medi­um, lend­ing a warmth that feels both inti­mate and frag­ile. This still­ness, paired with his cry, breaks the busy rhythm that has so far kept Khim-Hok’s emo­tion at bay. It is a ges­ture of star­tling vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty that breaks through his denial, mak­ing grief impos­si­ble to sup­press any longer.

When their son returns, the seclu­sion which had so far allowed Khim-Hok to con­tin­ue liv­ing with his wife is encroached, dis­rupt­ing the frag­ile tem­po­ral sus­pen­sion of his grief. As they pre­pare for the funer­al, the rela­tion­ship between Khim-Hok, his son, and the son’s part­ner remains lacon­ic and steely. In sev­er­al scenes, the three men spa­tial­ly occu­py the frame, but they often stand apart, often­times the dad with­in the back­ground and the cou­ple in the fore­ground or vice ver­sa. The com­po­si­tion itself reflects their dis­con­nec­tion: three peo­ple mov­ing through the same rit­u­als across entire­ly dif­fer­ent spa­tial and tem­po­ral planes. This intri­cate chore­og­ra­phy stands in qui­et con­trast to ear­li­er scenes, where Khim-Hok and his wife moved in gen­tle sync. Often walk­ing slight­ly apart, they still fol­lowed one anoth­er, occu­py­ing the frame with a rhythm that felt habit­u­al and inter­de­pen­dent. Their shared pres­ence ground­ed the frame with a qui­et inti­ma­cy that now feels con­spic­u­ous­ly absent. Just before the cre­ma­tion, Khim-Hok places his wife’s body in a truck and takes her on a final jour­ney and speaks to her as if she were still alive. Her pres­ence is not mor­bid, but com­fort­ing, mark­ing a shift from the ear­li­er freez­er scene where his denial felt des­per­ate. Now there is ten­der­ness, a qui­et attempt to stay close and say good­bye on his own terms. In the end, the film returns to its open­ing shot – Khim-Hok seat­ed before the water­fall that his wife had desired to vis­it togeth­er, now car­ry­ing the full weight of their shared mem­o­ries and her pass­ing. Life con­tin­ues, but he remains sus­pend­ed in grief, and his every­day life is shaped by absence: not the kind that fades, but the kind that set­tles in and lingers.