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One-word titles like that of the Belgian writer and director Bas Devos\u2019s \u201cHere\u201d can create a minuet of meaning. In this hushed drama that gently rebuffs the beats of a love story even as it hints at one, the word is a call for the viewer\u2019s attention and an acknowledgment of place.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my home,\u201d Stefan (Stefan Gota), a Romanian construction worker, says to himself, looking out over the city from his apartment in the Jette commune, northwest of Brussels.<\/p>\n
Sitting in front of his refrigerator, Stefan pulls out vegetables and sniffs containers. He makes a soup that he\u2019ll deliver to friends before he leaves on vacation. But he also alludes to leaving the city for a longer spell. Did we mention he\u2019s struggling with an insomnia that keeps him walking the streets in the still hours, paying heed to things that might be lost in the daylight\u2019s bustle?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Across the city, a graduate student named Shuxiu (Liyo Gong) describes a state of being at a loss for words before being fully awake, as images of the natural world unfold. Stefan is observant because he\u2019s sleepless, and Shuxiu, a bryologist who studies moss, is attentive by calling.<\/p>\n
When Stefan first encounters Shuxiu, he is sitting, soaked, in a Chinese restaurant. When they meet again in a wooded area, it is coincidental and freighted with possibility. What will become of them isn\u2019t the purview of the film, or its point, exactly. And, yet, in this painstakingly muted, luminously photographed testimony to connection, nothing much and everything happens \u2014 or could.<\/p>\n
Here<\/strong>
Not rated. In Dutch, French, Romanian and Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 22 minutes. In theaters.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n