‘The Dating Game’: Sundance Review

Dir: Violet Du Feng. US/UK/Norway. 2025. 91mins

The guts is a lonely hunter in The Relationship Recreation, particularly when the odds are so stacked in opposition to it. Violet Du Feng’s extremely entertaining documentary follows three younger Chinese language males determined for love and ready to attend a seven-day relationship camp to extend their possibilities of discovering it. Particular person tales of the lovelorn are woven into the larger image of a society dwelling with the penalties of its one-child coverage. An insightful, interesting movie touches movingly on the human want for connection, and will obtain a heat reception from audiences and distributors following its premiere in Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary competitors.

Sustained by the humanity that Du Feng finds in every of these people 

Du Feng, who beforehand directed Peabody Award- and Emmy-nominated 2022 documentary Hidden Letters, supplies some context on how the one-child coverage left China with 30 million extra males then girls. She then introduces us to relationship coach Hao and his newest pupils; 36 year-old Zhou, shy, immature 24 year-old Li and quiet, introspective 27 year-old Wu. Hao plans to construct their confidence, rework their look with an entire makeover and educate all of them the methods assured to carry them success.

Hao is brashly assured, well-groomed and fortunately married so seems to have all the solutions. The pupils are nonetheless cautious of what he proposes, eager to be genuine relatively than a model of themselves that they don’t recognise. What’s the level of this sport if all the pieces is constructed on an phantasm? 

The Relationship Recreation unfolds in Chongqing, a metropolis with a resident inhabitants of some 30 million. Cinematographer Wei Gao captures a way of the scale and sprawl of the place, from its towering skyscrapers to bustling buying malls and beguiling metropolis lights. At any second of the day, the streets are populated by the younger and exquisite. Their numbers solely make our trio extra insecure. They’re all satisfied that they lack the appears, standing and wealth that may make them a catch. 

The movie takes on extra complexity as we find out about Hao and his pupils. Hao’s spouse Wen can be a relationship coach and their scenes collectively are a revelation. She claims that her job is to assist girls recognise that their standards for a boyfriend are unrealistic. All realizing smiles, rolling eyes and sarcastic feedback, she describes Hao’s strategies as “greasy” – saying out loud what many in the viewers may have been pondering.

If Hao is allowed to be an object of ridicule at occasions, Du Feng takes the three younger males severely when chronicling their vulnerability and clueless method to relationship. The movie widens its focus to the touch on the manner the transfer from rural to city China has impacted on fashionable relationships and the progress of square-jawed, delicate digital boyfriends who provide all the pieces a woman may need – other than being actual. 

Du Fang’s successful method is to maintain peeling away the layers of who this central trio actually are. The reserved Wu sparks alive throughout a photograph session with a pack of cute husky canine and is rather more comfortable with animals than people. Li is terrified of creating the first transfer and even speaking to a woman. Zhou is a romantic and a realist, conscious that his age could have already rendered him over the hill in the relationship stakes.

The Relationship Recreation is sustained by the humanity that Du Feng finds in every of the people we come to know and perceive a bit higher. The bond that develops between them is a candy friendship, and the photographs of remoted moments of quiet contemplation add to the general poignancy of a movie that in the end salutes the advantage of  being true to your self. An epilogue set one yr later exhibits that the relationship coach could have learnt as a lot as the pupils over the course of their week collectively.