There’s a sense that this gently meandering, sketchbook-like work is aware of its own cinematic precedents. It certainly seems to suffer from an anxiety of influence as it tries to carve out a space ...

The quote that opens Chinese director Liu Jian’s shaggy but amiable new animated feature is instructive. “To live, to err, to fall, to triumph, to recreate life out of life” is a passage from James ...