This is my third Jia Zhang-ke film, and probably my favorite. The characters have a perfect level of melancholy throughout the film to be believable without ever even approaching melodrama. The film follows two characters. A male character searches for his daughter and the mother of his daughter whom he hasn’t seen in 16 years, and a nurse who is searching for her husband, whom she has not seen in 2 years. To make matter worse (and to give this film its plot), the town that both of them are searching in has recently been submerged under water. Jia ‘s usual themes of modernization, nostalgia, and artificiality are present, with occasional, jarring moments of otherworldy sci-fi. The views of the newer buildings in Still Life evoke Antonioni’s L’Eclisse. This is a very relaxing film, I saw it on a flight, and it eased, or numbed, my fears of my plane crashing. The cinematography is among the more beautiful that I have seen this year, and I prefer it to the lensing in 24 City and The World.