Written by 
“The people you meet are only reflections of your own state of mind” according to a sympathetic tarot reader in Yuan Qing’s Three Adventures of Brooke (星溪的三次奇遇, xīng xī de sāncì qíyù). Perhaps that’s why she herself is slightly different each time we meet her, experiencing three sets of parallel encounters as she searches for meaning in a foreign land. Echoing Rohmer’s The Green Ray, Brooke’s three encounters allow her to examine more of herself until she learns to open her heart, no longer suspicious or afraid but ready to see the world’s beauty even in its sadness.
20-something Brooke (Xu Fangyi) has come to Alor Setar in Malaysia from Beijing. This appears to be a concrete fact, though many other things about her will change, at least in our perception of her. On June 30, her bicycle gets a puncture and she’s stuck, alone, in the middle of a country road without knowing who to ask for help. A series of strangers come to her rescue beginning with Ailing (Ribbon Ooi), a local girl who can speak Mandarin as well as Malaysian and Hokkien, who happens by Brooke looking distressed and takes her home where she shares some handy bicycle repair tips while explaining that her tyres were too pumped up for the head local climate and likely to explode.
Brooke tells Ailing that she came to Alor Setar to visit her researcher father, but that he preferred to hang out with his colleagues, all geeky middle-aged men, playing mahjong and singing karaoke, so she got bored and decided to go travelling. The central crisis occurs when Brooke ventures into a shop selling crystals and is convinced to buy an extremely expensive one which is apparently something of a unique item. Brooke shows the crystal off to Ailing, but she’s quietly outraged, sure that Brooke has been taken advantage of by the unscrupulous salesman. Ailing takes it upon herself to try and get some of the money back, while Brooke assumes that Ailing has tricked her and made off with her “extremely valuable” piece of rock which the salesman assured her would help her find all the things she desires. In a strange way it does. Making her first enquiry with the tarot reader, she’s told that her own suspicious nature is to blame, the stone isn’t missing only in the wrong place and will be found again. She realises that she was wrong to suspect Ailing who has become a genuine friend, while regaining the stone for a much lower price only makes her question its value.
It’s value and fear that concern her in second adventure which is taken with three chatty part-time council workers apparently working on a regeneration project designed to “accentuate” historical culture to make it more desirable to the young, though their intentions ma perhaps destroy the peculiar tranquillity of Alor Setar, turning it into just another anonymous town of glass and steel. This time around, Brooke tells them that she’s an anthropologist interested in the relationship between people and cities, but spends the day desperately trying to get away from the three guys who are both boring and perhaps mildly threatening in their determination to railroad her into doing as they please.
The second encounter proving hugely satisfactory, on the third iteration of June 30, Brooke finds herself desperately pushing her bike towards somewhere that might be able to help her, eventually arriving at a garage where she meets melancholy blocked writer, Pierre (Pascal Greggory). This Brooke is a wounded widow, though unlike her previous two incarnations she already knows the secret of “Alor Setar” and has come because of it. Asked what “Alor Setar” meant, Ailing could only reply that it was just a place name and otherwise unimportant, while the guys had made a point of having a plaque made in English explaining that it means “starry brook” which happens to be the same as Brooke’s Chinese name. She’s come hoping to see this titular waterway, but is repeatedly told that it doesn’t exist before being guided towards it by a rather snarky “god”, only to be disappointed on its discovery. Pierre, meanwhile, is on a search for Blue Tears, on which she decides to accompany him, unburdening herself on her recent trauma to quiet, ironically fatherly older man on his own quest for meaning. “It’s a sad and beautiful world” he murmurs, accidentally or otherwise quoting Jarmusch’s Down By Law. The Blue Tears burn out bright, lighting the way as they go. Age has taught Pierre that it’s enough to live peacefully surrounded by the people you love, while Brooke is learning something similar in opening her heart to small moments of beauty and the fleeting joy of serendipitous meetings.
Trailer (English subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 