[4] A Song Sung Blue premiered in the Directors' Fortnight program at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival,[5] where it was in competition for the Caméra d'Or[1] and the Queer Palm.
[4] John Berra of Screen Daily wrote that "Geng Zihan’s bittersweet debut feature A Song Sung Blue could easily be summarised as another wispy coming-of-age drama in which a young person’s life is forever changed by the events of one particular summer.
Its slight narrative concerning the romantic yearnings of a teenage girl certainly fits neatly into that template, while hazy atmospherics bathe the proceedings in the anticipated pained nostalgia for the recent past.
Yet this delicate affair lingers longer than one might expect, as Geng’s sensitive direction of Liu Yining’s nuanced screenplay imbues familiar tropes with a fresh perspective.
It also benefits greatly from Zhou Meijun’s lead performance which provides a palpable undercurrent of ennui that is entirely in keeping with the melancholic title.