After his first feature, “The Summer is Gone” (2016), Zhang Dalei returns to filmmaking, and to the same family, with “Day is Done” – both titles revealing in themselves a certain sense of nostalgia. However, this is not about nostalgia for childhood as a lost paradise, even though the feature revolved around Xiao Lei as a kid, and now he is a teenager, in good coming-of-age fashion. This nostalgia is mainly a lethargic everyday life that Xiao Lei finds himself in when he visits his grandfather, along with other relatives, before leaving for his studies. Through a tracking shot that presents a back and forth among several characters, Dalei builds and reveals the space of the mise-en-scène – the house – and simultaneously confers it a time, a time that seems to be permanently draining away. Preparing a meal, eating, revisiting family albums, watching a movie on TV, a book in the garden, an afternoon nap and… the “day is done”. (AJM)