This austere but strangely absorbing drama opens in point of view, with someone rolling a cigarette – tearing off a paper, laying out a line of tobacco, methodically rolling it, striking a match, lighting up, puffing away. This would be mundane, except that he’s doing all this entirely with his toes. Our nameless protagonist does not, in fact, have arms. He doesn’t speak much, either – and the chilly romance he forms with a deaf-mute guest doesn’t encourage conversation ... Jin Guang-hao’s debut – a film of quiet ambition – is a sympathetic, though despairing look at the challenge of living with a major disability.

Jin works under a formal restriction of some daring: every single image in the film is, without exception, a point of view shot. There are no inserts, no establishing shots (except inasmuch as Jin can stretch a character’s point of view to provide establishment) – nothing but the characters’ own visual experience. This unusual restriction proves an intriguing formal counterpoint to the content. A film with only one type of shot, Jin argues, is like a person with some vital faculty missing – their arms, or their voice, or whatnot. And just as the characters in the film develop extraordinary abilities in other parts of their body, to compensate for a lack somewhere else, Jin’s formal “handicap” allows him to push the boundaries of the techniques he does allow himself. His signature, for instance, is a startling use of shot-reverse-shot – but in long-shot. The two characters gaze at one another in consternation, across what seems like a yawning gulf. It’s an effective visual metaphor for their unwillingness to communicate fully, and when they finally form a warmer relationship and the camera draws in, the emotional effect is pronounced.

A humane and formally astute debut, Life Track marks Jin Guang-hao as a keen new talent in Chinese cinema.