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Film Dark Matter

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Dark Matter, a film about the fraught power dynamics of higher academia, flounders when its storytelling reflects the ideological absolutism that it maligns. But for the bulk of this film about Liu Xing, a Chinese PhD student whose brilliance outstrips that of his American advisor (Aidan Quinn) at a Midwestern university, a subtle compassion supplants any narrative grandstanding. As college benefactor Joanna Silver, Meryl Streep turns in an unusually naturalistic performance, reconciling pity and power as a flush of passion, with none of her usual tics. Director Shi-Zheng Chen, meanwhile, brilliantly contrasts the teeming interiors of poverty in both China and the US with the cool, uninterrupted surfaces afforded by wealth.

– Lisa Rosman