Her sense of smell dominates Yang’s life. Due to a rare condition, most odors are unbearable for her – except for the smell of lemons and disinfectant. But one day, an unfamiliar scent leads her to a stranger, Fang. It turns out, though, that he is in a coma. Despite his state, Fang is trapped inside – in a life where childhood, fantasy and forbidden desire overlap and blend. His sister, who supported them as a masseuse, returns as a woman in red. And somewhere, the borders between the living, the lost, the dreamed and the imagined are starting to blur for Yang and Fang.
This is the story – well, part of it – of writer-director Xue Ma’s Aroma (Hõng), her third feature film after White River and Sonata of Wave. If you sense that her new film sounds, looks and feels offbeat, it is just fitting that it will world premiere in the Rebels With a Cause Competition section of the 30th edition of Estonia’s Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival (PÖFF) on Nov. 16.
In Aroma, Jiali Zhao stars as Yang, while Weihao Xu portrays Fang. Ze Ying and Lu Huang also feature in the cast. The cinematographer is Ash Chen, with editing by Maxime Pozzi-Garcia.
‘Aroma’
Courtesy of PÖFF
The filmmaker “turns smell into an invisible passage between reality and the subconscious,” the PÖFF website teases audiences about the dark fairy tale. “Ash Chen’s hypnotic cinematography gives texture to unstable memories, drawing us from clinical stillness into a dream-world glowing with danger and desire. Sensuous, unsettling and quietly provocative, Aroma keeps its deepest secret just beyond reach. Fang may be trapped inside his fantasy – but what if he is not the only one caught there?”
The filmmaker talked to THR about the themes she explored in the film. But before you read about what she shared below, THR can exclusively premiere the trailer for Aroma.
Since the film is created as a stylized feast for the senses, we won’t keep you from watching, hearing and feeling the exclusive trailer. And we wonder if your sense of smell may also get stimulated…
“Cinema lets people experience feelings,” Ma tells THR about her approach to the many sensuous elements that Aroma provides. “I always imagine what cinematic language to use. I think it’s very interesting to experiment and share with others a common [sensory] experience – from the visual and sound to the smell and touch” and to connect that to emotions.
She also tries to surprise audiences. “As an Asian filmmaker, I hope to move beyond the expectations and frameworks through which filmmakers from Asian cultural backgrounds are often viewed internationally,” she tells THR. “I want to create with greater freedom.”
The themes that Aroma explores are also universal, she emphasizes. “Loneliness and something like longing for intimacy is not a matter of language boundaries or [tied to a certain] social and cultural background,” Ma says. “There are people in the world, especially in Asian countries, who cannot express their real emotions and their real emotional needs very clearly. They will hide some secrets. Most people just have this mask. So, actually, I think most of the audience can, in some moments, empathize with the protagonists’ situation.”
And that is particularly true for present-day life. “In this post-pandemic time, this world is very crazy, and I think people can easily feel uncertain and unsettled,” the creative tells THR. “There is a feeling of drifting, so people lose their sense of self and become more acutely aware of their loneliness. The film speaks to the confusion and struggles that anyone might experience beneath their mask.”
The film’s blurring of imagination, reality and dreams is, of course, by design. “All three elements start from human beings,” the Aroma writer-director explains. “So, I don’t think a dream is fake, and reality is real. I think sometimes a dream is more real because there is no need to tell everyone. This is a very secret world. So maybe the dream is more telling about people’s inner side.”
Ma concludes: “I wanted this [cinematic] world to play like a puzzle. Maybe this kind of world can inspire other people to rethink their behavior or what they pay attention to.”
