15 Jun Guidance Review

GUIDANCE

dir. Neysan Sobhani, starring Sun Jia, Harry Song, and Francesco Chen

In the not-too-distant future, humanity slowly rebuilds itself a decade after The Great War. Believing that the ability to lie is the root cause of the devastating conflict, a tech
entrepreneur creates a pill containing a nanotechnology app known as “Guidance” that allegedly will make everyone more enlightened. Once swallowed, an A.I. “installs” in the person’s nervous system and aids their ability to detect deception in other people among other enhancements.

A young couple goes on a weekend retreat to the countryside, and they begin to use Guidance. However, recent events have potentially compromised their trust in one another. With the tech in their bodies, the couple tries to subvert Guidance in the hopes of saving their relationship before it’s too late.

Starring Sun Jia as Han Miao and Harry Song as Mai Zi Xuan, with additional support from Francesco Chen (Su Jie), the paltry casting supports the overall minimalist nature of the film. Sun Jia, while sharing the majority of the movie with Song, is the film’s standout as the woman playing multiple games in attempt to salvage a crumbling relationship. Her performance is brilliant, playing through levels of anger, despair, and coyness. It’s Miao’s duplicitous nature, seen up front in the film’s first few minutes, that makes Jia’s performance fascinating to watch; the question of if she’ll manage to successfully navigate a potentially relationship-destroying weekend is the hook that keeps the viewer locked in. Also starring Harry Song as Mai Zi Xuan, the sly setup of the secrets Mai is keeping goes a long way to exemplifying the toxicity of a lack of open communication between the two. More on the backpedal throughout the film than Miao is, Mai’s wish for a quiet getaway of connecting with nature and watching launching rockets unfortunately doesn’t work out in his favor. Song plays Mai’s frustrations, fears, and unwillingness to fully open himself to Miao wonderfully; thanks to the performance from the two leads the question can arguably be raised of whether or not these two are better off apart. Francesco Chen’s Su Jie, the fly in the ointment between the two, is a delightfully greasy one-note antagonist with a singular goal in mind and will stop at nothing to achieve his wants. While in movie far less than the leads, with maybe 10 total minutes of screen time, Chen makes the best of it, delivering a character you love to hate.

Written and directed by Neysan Sobhani, his first feature length film, Guidance displays a filmmaker using the confidence of his previous short films parlayed into a solid initial outing. Running at a scant 93 minutes, the movie packs a lot into that short amount of time: expert setups, mystery, secrets, unexpected revelations, and a ton of dramatic irony. Sobhani’s decision to place the couple in isolation reflects the isolation they feel from each other, hoping to reconnect and start fresh with the help of Guidance. The quasi love triangle interspersed within the weekend getaway is wonderfully edited, saving some of the juiciest bits for the third act and ensuring the audience stays on the hook throughout. The cinematography is gorgeous as well, director of photography Saba Mazloum takes full advantage of the natural light provided by the set design’s open-window spaces; wall to floor glass panels gives the couple the illusion of transparency and Mazloum lets the sun do the majority of the lighting work. The outside shots are just as beautiful; the open serenity of nature conflicts with the invasive presence of technology in a way that suggests Sobhani may be gently rebuking the technological advances of the world: the further down this path we go, the more we lose our relationship with nature.

Overall, Guidance will be a slept-on piece of science fiction that will be overshadowed by bigger, flashier, larger budget films. That’s unfortunate; the quiet character work, the solid direction from Sobhani, and the juxtaposition between the openness of the natural world and the closed off nature of the characters’ relationship all combine to create a more than worthy addition to the genre. Free of an overabundance of visual effects, the focus on solid acting and solid storytelling are first and foremost. A quiet study on trust and how secrets can poison a relationship, Guidance is a must-see for fans of character-driven stories. Guidance will be released in the US and worldwide on VOD on June 17th on all major platforms including Apple TV/iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Vudu, XFinity Cable, and more.

Review by Darryl Mansel