While all three of his previous features deal with outsiders or foreigners, this time Chen himself has become a stranger to the place and the people in his China-set story.

| Oct 22, 2024

Despite the film’s clear highlighting of class dichotomies between the rich and working-class, it finds a sympathetic commonality in all of them in the mysteries of youth.

| Mar 5, 2024

What Anthony Chen’s films lack in sticking to the ribs is more than made up for in their emotional verisimilitude, and “The Breaking Ice” is no exception

| Original Score: A- | Feb 9, 2024

I love the sense of place.

| Original Score: 8.7/10 | Feb 2, 2024

I think this is really gorgeous, and and I hope it finds an audience here.

| Original Score: 8.5/10 | Feb 2, 2024

The script by Chen manages to offer a coral look that allows us to get close to each central character and truly identify with them. [Full review in Spanish[

| Jan 29, 2024

The payoff is a movie that, more than not, lyrically roams between states of being while skirting the need to explain itself. The experiment mostly works.

| Jan 29, 2024

Redolent with longing and loosely tracing the edges of Jules and Jim (1960), Anthony Chen’s menage a trois drama is an instantly familiar story which one can slip into with ease.

| Jan 28, 2024

It evokes an unforced sense of authenticity. The central trio is eminently relatable, making you wistful for the past or reminding you of your current drinking buddies, and the final scenes give each of them a moment of clarity.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 24, 2024

The visual poetry of the images keeps the tone lyrical, and by the time the tour guide herself becomes a tourist, even being prevented from seeing Heaven Lake by the weather, we share the characters’ renewed belief in possibility.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 19, 2024

[I]n the story's simplicity, it's rather sad and lovely...

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 19, 2024

A film that, in its best moments, feels as light and refreshing as a cool breeze.

| Jan 18, 2024

Lyrical, quietly moving and beautifully shot, but ultimately undercooked.

| Jan 16, 2024

The Breaking Ice is fixated on intense in-between states that work to separate people from each other and from themselves, as if to say self-acceptance and love aren’t destinations so much as journeys, at once formidable and worthwhile.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 15, 2024

The Breaking Ice confirms the ability of the previous winner of the Camera d’Or to build choral, intimate, and personal stories while exploring human relationships, depression, and polyamory.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 7, 2024

“The Breaking Ice” contains so much that is easily appreciated. Its method of diving into the chaotic mentality of these young people who yearn so much for a sense of connectivity within a splintered environment is an engrossing sentiment.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 15, 2023

this gorgeously shot feature, set in the cold, wintry city of Yanji, on China’s northern border is an engaging character study.

| Original Score: B- | Dec 2, 2023

The Breaking Ice is a fine cinematic tableau, intimate, immersive and illuminating.

| Oct 31, 2023

Ultimately as cold to the touch as its frozen setting, the lack of emotional catharsis speaks to a work high on words and ideas but low on a cohesive vision.

| Original Score: C+ | Sep 15, 2023

Thankfully, Chen just lets his three actors wander around, finding small bits of business for them to do... and the film is all the better for it.

| Sep 13, 2023