Author: rb809rb

“Zero part of me wants to do what I’m doing right now,” insists Jack (Jake Johnson) as he prepares to tell Wendy (Dakota Fanning), his girlfriend of two years, that he thinks they should take a six-month break. He believes she needs the space to figure out what she wants, even as she pleads that what she wants is him.

Oddly, he seems to mean it, or at least to believe he does. He really is happy with her; he really doesn’t have an ulterior motive; he really does intend to just sit around for the next six months, waiting to see if she returns.

Why, then, he mounts this ultimatum anyway is one of the emotional mysteries of The Sun Never Sets. Mostly they’re fun ones, thanks to writer-director Joe Swanberg’s knack for naturalistic chemistry and eye for casual beauty. But just as listening to a friend dither over an on-again, off-again relationship gets old eventually, there’s a limit to how many times Jack and Wendy can flip and flop before the beats grow repetitive.

Initially, Jack’s edict has Wendy reeling. It’s true that she’d always thought she would get married and have kids, and that Jack, who’s a bit older, has made it clear he has no intention of getting remarried or having more kids. But she’s made her peace with the compromise, doting on Jack’s adorable children with his first wife (Anna Konkle) without a trace of resentment. Never mind that her best friend (Debby Ryan) announcing she’s pregnant sends Wendy screaming to herself in her car, overwhelmed to see everyone else moving on while she feels stuck in place.

But then Wendy runs into Chuck (Cory Michael Smith), the ex who got away. Suddenly, Jack’s out-of-the-blue demand looks like a blessing in disguise — especially since this Chuck claims he’s ready for commitment and a family, in contrast to the “scared little bitch” he freely admits he was three years ago. And suddenly, Jack is forced to confront the possibility that his little experiment might not go as planned.

From there, Wendy ping-pongs between the family-man boyfriend who’s not really her boyfriend at the moment, and the fuckboy former flame who’s no longer quite so former. The men oscillate between wooing her and disappointing her, sometimes to comic effect and sometimes to a more bittersweet one. At every turn, all three struggle to distinguish between what they want, what they want to want and what they don’t actually want but are just afraid of not having.

Swanberg’s loose approach to storytelling, in which he outlines a plot and then lets his cast improvise the lines, is perhaps the movie’s greatest asset. Even when the plot machinations feel engineered, as they tend to when characters change their minds as frequently and vehemently as these three do, the cast’s warm, comfortable chemistry — built through body language, shared looks and off-the-cuff remarks — keeps their feelings grounded in a believable spontaneity.

Johnson (whose previous collaborations with the filmmaker include the exceptionally astute Drinking Buddies) is particularly adept at this style of performance. He brings to Jack a playful self-awareness, which paradoxically makes him easier to buy as a real person: Where a fictional one might react to soap operatics like an argument in a bar bathroom with tears or screams, Jack starts laughing, able to see the absurdity of the situation for what it is. This sense of humor, in turn, makes him easier to root for even when he acts, every so often, like a petulant brat.

Fanning, who has rarely looked more radiant despite Wendy spending most of her time in sensible workwear and minimal makeup, has strong enough chemistry with both her leading men that we can see why she’s torn between them, as well as enough magnetism of her own that we want her to be happy even when her behavior tips toward self-sabotage. And Smith is effectively alluring as Chuck, though his is the least developed corner of this love triangle. He’s a hunky symbol for Wendy and Jack to fight about rather than a protagonist with his own legible motives and desires.

That all of this endless will-they-won’t-they is playing out against the natural splendor of Anchorage’s endless summer days (captured in 35mm by cinematographer Eon Mora) and gorgeously sunlit blond wood interiors (staged by production Aaron Bailey) makes it go down quite easily for a while. If nothing else, The Sun Never Sets mounts an excellent case for visiting Alaska and possibly looking for love there — even if slightly snobbish mainland transplant Jack does describe the local dating pool as “a bunch of goofy guys who smell like salmon.”

If the setting is beautiful and the characters vivid, however, the path that the film cuts through them ultimately proves too jerky and repetitive to take us anywhere truly illuminating. It’s true enough that our heart’s desires can be a puzzle even to ourselves, and that solving it can be the work of a lifetime. But there’s a difference between a character who doesn’t know what to make of themselves, and a film that doesn’t quite seem to know what to make of them either.

Is it a documentary? Is it improvised fiction? No, it is both! And it is called Whispers in May, the second feature film from Dongnan Chen (Singing in the Wilderness), which explores the transition from girlhood to womanhood through the eyes of three Chinese girls on a road trip.

One of the three girls is Qihuo, who has a secret, namely that she has just had her first menstruation. That makes her ready for the traditional “Changing Skirt” coming-of-age ceremony. With her migrant worker parents away, she goes on a voyage with her two best friends to buy a skirt. Whispers in May blends documentary with an improvised fictional journey to follow them and take us to the edge of girlhood and womanhood.

Whispers in May will world premiere on Sunday, March 15, in the main competition lineup of CPH:DOX, the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival. 

Jia Zhao of Muyi Film produced the hybrid doc with Chen’s Tail Bite Tail Films in co-production with Malin Hüber for Her Film in Sweden and Heejung Oh for Seesaw Pictures in South Korea.
 
Chen met Qihuo on a trip to Liangshan. “At 14, she was at a point where childhood was starting to slip away,” she recalls. “The world was ready to name her – a woman, wife, and migrant worker – before she could choose her own course.”

That inspired Chen to make Whispers in May. The director talked to THR about the creative process behind the film, its hybrid form, “casting” the girls, and what she will do next.

How did you find or “cast” the girls? 

I initially traveled to the Liangshan Mountains for a commission on shorts centered on Nuosu women across generations. During the research, I got the chance to read essays written by local school children, and their voices were staggering. Some imagined a future where they might live and die unnoticed in a dim city basement, while others wildly dreamed of lines of suitors in luxury cars stretching from Liangshan all the way to Paris.  

But one line felt like a quiet ache: “I’ve made many wishes, but none has ever come true.” That line belonged to Qihuo. When I met her, it was love at first sight, a feeling that’s hard to explain, but it’s how almost all my films begin. From that first day, Qihuo became a constant presence, calling us to ask where we were or if we’d eaten, eventually just following us around. And she discovered and pulled out my very first white hair!  

As we talked more, I got to know she was temporarily in a “homeless” state. Her parents were away as migrant laborers, and the grandfather who had raised her recently passed away. She was drifting between the homes of different relatives, but would often sneak back to her grandfather’s old house. It was in this solitude she carried her menstruation secret. In her community, this triggers the Changing Skirt Ceremony, a rite of passage that signals she is no longer a child of her birth family and can be married off for a large dowry. This became a clock. I felt we were racing against time to do something. 

Please tell me about how much mixed film forms: how much did you document in traditional documentary form and how much of the film is improvised or staged fiction? 
 
I think of the film as a dream running parallel to reality. The documentary elements provide the soil: the rugged reality of the Liangshan Mountains, the absence of parents, and the gravity of the Changing Skirt Ceremony. But together with the girls, we grew flowers on that soil. 

Qihuo’s deepest wish was to leave home and see the world, so we chose the form of a road trip as an extension of their immediate environment. For the girls, the distinction between fiction and non-fiction doesn’t really make sense. I simply invited them to treat the film as a space where they could be the protagonists and co-creators of their own adventure.

The interesting thing is that once we stop thinking about the boundary between the two, the process becomes beautifully blurry. I can no longer clearly tell which moments were designed and which happened spontaneously. By letting the girls play themselves, I gradually felt we achieved something truer than facts. Ultimately, we all have a story like that, right? One that exists beyond the borders of our daily lives. Or, to look at it another way: we don’t have to just live the lives we are given; we can invent them as we go. I hope this film empowers these girls to realize that they can be the authors of their own adventures, both for this film and for the life beyond. 
 
How did you and your team work with the kids? They have such great energy and charisma, but I assume you needed to collaborate and protect them? 
 
To me, this production was always a playground rather than a set. The very origin of this film was the girls’ own agency to be on the road, so protecting their courage and curiosity was vital not just as an ethical responsibility, but also for the film to even exist.  
 
We didn’t have a script, but we had a shared outline of possibilities at the start. And we watched clips together during the production to spark dialogues about where to go next. This allowed the film to breathe and follow their rhythm, so the filming became something we discovered together.

During this process, the girls truly revealed to me a fierce and quiet resistance of childhood. To see them on the road, moving away from a prescribed fate and toward an unknown horizon, showed cinema in its purest and most original form. It made me think about what we can achieve through the medium of film; it’s so powerful to extend the boundaries of a life. that
 
We also maintained a transparent dialogue with the parents and the school to build a foundation of formal trust, while holding a private, sacred space for the girls until they were ready to share on their own terms.  

I love how we see beautiful nature and how it feels like a contrast to society and its norms and expectations. How important was that for you? 

In the wilderness, the landscape echoes the girls’ untamed energy. Nature nourishes them as they grow and is an extension of their inner landscape. It grants them a suspended freedom, where their laughter and sorrows aren’t muffled by noises or expectations. They aren’t subjects of a social category, but simply exist as themselves. 

Yet this beauty carries weight. In Liangshan, the mountains are layer upon layer; the very thing that protects their innocence is also what isolates them. The construction scenes throughout the film signal this shifting reality, and the girls often wonder, “What is behind the mountains?” These mountains are more than physical barriers. They also carry the weight of local community norms and the grueling path toward a world they haven’t seen. 
 
Is the myth of Coqotamat, which we hear about in the film, real? Where does it come from? 

During filming, the girls would tell stories to each other at night, and Coqotamat was the one they shared most often. They heard about it from their grandparents and are truly terrified by it. It’s an oral tale passed down through generations, and because it’s not a written text, it breathes and changes. I later learned that many communities in Liangshan have different versions, though the core remains the same. It is their shared heritage, but also their shared imagination. So, we decided to embrace this fluidity and created our own version of the myth together. 

While Coqotamat is a shape-shifter who wears the faces of a thousand women to lure children away and swallow them whole, the girls are running away from a fate that has been wearing the same face for generations. And in researching the Nuosu folklore [the Nuosu are an ethnic group in southern China], I was struck by how many of them are very similar to Western tales, like the Grimm Brothers’. There must be psychological reasons for this similarity across cultures, as fairy tales serve as a survival manual for little girls by encoding the dangers of the adult world. The Changing Skirt Ceremony is their version of the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood.  

Can you tell me how you chose the film’s title?
 
The film’s titles are different in three languages because the feeling of each language is so unique. The English title originates from the Nuosu title, ꉬꆪꂁꇐ (May, Hidden). We happened to make this film in May. It wasn’t really planned, yet it mirrors the last moments of childhood. And the transition to womanhood isn’t a loud explosion; it’s a quiet, drifting slip just before reality settles in.  

My friend Arthur Jones helped with the English translation. After watching the film, he was grabbed by the gentle, small sounds – the wind through the mountain flowers and the girls’ voices. He felt that Whispers of May captured the essence of what was “hidden” but translated it into a sensory experience. For the Mandarin title, we used Spring Reverie (春日幻游).  
 
Will we see more films from you? Do you have any new films in the works? 
 
I’m in early development of a hybrid narrative feature about a woman who tries to preserve her hometown through a camera, only to find that the more she records, the more the real world dissolves into a mosaic of digital fragments.

Drawn from my experience over a decade in filming real people, the project explores the fragility of storytelling in an image-saturated world and the search for a truth that might exist beyond the frame.

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Between rental services and marketplaces for pre-worn goods, the internet is hardly short on fashion retailers promising the best prices on coveted designer pieces. More often than not, though, the reality falls short: quality can be hit-or-miss, sizing runs thin, and the discounts rarely feel as compelling as advertised.

That’s where Rue La La comes in, and, refreshingly, it actually delivers on the promise.

The online shopping platform is home to thousands of discounted favorites, with some pieces priced up to 70 percent below their original retail tags. Everything is available through special members-only pricing that can make an already appealing deal feel even sweeter. But what exactly is Rue La La, and how did a small Boston-based business grow into one of the most beloved insider shopping destinations on the internet? Below, we break down how it works, how to join, and why fashion insiders quietly keep it bookmarked.

What Is Rue La La?

If you’ve never heard of Rue La La, consider this your stylish introduction. Founded in Boston in 2008, the platform began as a “flash-sale concept,” per the company, and has since evolved into one of the easiest ways to score meaningful discounts on designer brands.

At any given moment, the site is stocked with labels shoppers actually want to wear, think everyone from Tory Burch to Ted Baker, alongside heritage houses like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. The inventory rotates frequently, which means the selection rarely feels picked over. During one recent browse, we even spotted a classic Chanel quilted bag listed for under $10,000, a notable drop from the style’s typical $12,000 retail price.

The model is built around a members-only structure. While joining is completely free (more on that below), membership is required to access the deals. The company operates through what it calls “boutiques,” limited-time digital storefronts that spotlight specific brands or product categories. These sales are fleeting, and once the inventory is gone, the boutique closes.

In other words, hesitation is rarely rewarded. In the world of Rue La La, “finders keepers” is very real.

The upside of this fast-moving format is that the selection stays fresh. Rather than lingering for months, merchandise cycles through quickly, keeping the assortment aligned with what shoppers are actually looking for. Case in point: a sleek Alice + Olivia little black dress recently marked down to $179.99 from its original $465 price tag.

What Is Rue La La’s Membership Program, and How Does It Work?

Rue La La’s membership program is the only way to shop the platform, but despite the exclusivity of the concept, there’s no steep price of entry.

Membership is completely free.

Shoppers can sign up through the website or the brand’s app by entering an email address and confirming they’re at least 18 years old. Once registered, new members receive a 10 percent off code for their first purchase. From there, you’re officially in the club. The brand even offers an additional loyalty program where members can get free shipping for a year, invite-only sales, and other exclusive perks for only $30 (for the first year).

What’s Available on Rue La La?

Once inside, the sheer breadth of Rue La La’s inventory becomes clear. The platform carries fashion for men, women, and kids, alongside home décor, beauty, and lifestyle finds, making it something of a one-stop shop for elevated essentials.

The site itself is refreshingly intuitive. A clean navigation bar lets you browse by brand, category, or curated edit, while a dedicated clearance section offers even deeper markdowns on already-discounted pieces.

One feature worth bookmarking: “Today’s Fix.” The daily spotlight highlights a standout deal, often one of the best values currently on the site. Think of it as a small digital surprise, the kind that makes opening the homepage feel a bit like fashion advent calendar season.

And the inventory isn’t limited to clothing or accessories. Rue La La also offers travel experiences and luxury getaways at discounted rates. At the moment, for example, shoppers can find a stay at a Costa Rican lodge for up to 53 percent off, a reminder that the site’s definition of “lifestyle” goes well beyond the closet.

And if you’re ever worried about getting a dupe…not here. Rue La La takes the authenticity of a product very seriously, stating on their website, “Rue La La stands by the authenticity of every product sold on our site. Occasionally, we purchase merchandise from trusted independent suppliers, not directly from the brand owner. This includes pre-owned products.”

going fast

The Tranquilo Lodge Costa Rica

$924.00+ $1,980.00+ 53% off

Why Is Rue La La Worth It?

In short: yes, it’s worth it.

Rue La La is as thrilling for the seasoned sale-hunter as it is convenient for the everyday shopper who simply wants designer pieces without the designer markup. The constantly rotating inventory keeps things interesting, and the limited-time boutique format injects a little adrenaline into the browsing experience.

Shopping here doesn’t feel like ticking an errand off a list; it feels like discovering something.

The result is a retail experience that’s always new, rarely predictable, and surprisingly addictive. Think of it as a roulette wheel of designer deals: once you sit down at the table, it’s hard not to stay for just one more spin.

editor’s pick

Tod’s Leather Ballerina Flat

great deal

Spanx Brushed Full Zip Jacket

rare find

Louis Vuitton Brown Monogram Canvas Utility Crossbody (Authentic Pre-Loved)

$2,473.00 $2,748.00 10% off

designer snag

Gucci Women’s GG1031S 59mm Sunglasses