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Katarina Zhu (director), Bunnylovr, 2025. 86 min.

A webcam turns on: a white fishnet stocking appears up close, resembling a fence—one that invites the possibility of being climbed, crossed, and emerging on the other side: a place and a period where all loose ends are tied, and the next chapter of life can begin. The owner of the stockings is Rebecca—the writer, director, and star of Bunnylovr, Katarina Zhu—a young woman drifting, attempting to carve out a life for herself despite everything around her seeming to decay: her relationship with a white man who may have given her HPV; an estranged father nearing death; and a personal assistant job she loses as her private life bleeds into the professional.

Rebecca’s only pleasure seems to stem from the act of giving pleasure to others—people like her fans, who pay her in tokens to talk to her and tell her what to do. “I didn’t make them for my benefit,” she tells them of her private library of photos and videos. “I made them for yours.” When we enter the film—Eli Keszler’s hyper-pop score thrusts us into its glittering, hyper-pop mood—it is not immediately clear that we are witnessing the opening act of a transaction, one that will soon heighten and intensify all that is to come.

A man—supposedly named John, played by Austin Amelio with an unsettling blend of handsomeness and menace—manages to stand out from the crowd, offering Rebecca a gift: a white rabbit, its significance elusive. But then, during a camming session, the creature transforms into something else—a fetish object, arousing him. By accepting the gift, Rebecca forfeits control of the narrative. But since this is cinema, it is only a matter of time before she reclaims it, asserting herself, pushing boundaries and setting limits.

^{Cinematographer Cece Chan creates a cool, contemporary look for the film}

Rebecca is a young woman trying to make sense of her life—someone who neglects tidying her room, recoils from vapid, self-absorbed people, and casually endures racial slurs hurled at her in the middle of the street. Every time she reaches out to someone, they only exacerbate the situation, burdening her with their baggage, as if she can weather the weight.

“Are you lonely?” she asks John. “Because that’s what I’m here for.”

That sense of loneliness is never more pronounced than when she meets John in real life. Her face hardens as she realises they don’t truly know each other—their connection is superficial, transactional. The moment evokes the iconic closing scene of The Graduate, where Dustin Hoffman’s character, having won the girl of his dreams, suddenly registers his underwhelming reality.

^{The final scene of The Graduate (1967)}

But within this intricate narrative tapestry, which will receive greater scrutiny upon the film’s release, Zhu pointedly directs our gaze towards the subtler textures and nuances of human consciousness. She threads an ongoing motif that captures the micro-vortexes of anxiety intrinsic to contemporary life, particularly those induced by mobile phones: the way a vibrating call can amplify stress; how an unresponsive app compels compulsive restarting—closing applications, switching devices, grasping at control; or the liminal space of unsent messages, drafts lingering in digital purgatory, their fate uncertain. She even represents that sense of leaving a digital realm—a dating app, for instance—for something seemingly more tangible—like a burgeoning relationship—and then having to return to that familiar virtual space once the promise of connection begins to disintegrate. This cycle of departure and reluctant return captures the quiet devastation of lost attachment, the irrevocable erosion of an initial spark.

Her relationship with her father, played with heartrending depth by Perry Yung, is rendered with tender nuance. Whether they are meeting in Chinatown, where he slyly leads her to a diner bathed in the moody glow of a Wong Kar-wai film; conspiring in a card game, where she helps him cheat and accepts his illicit winnings as an unspoken gift; or sitting together in the hush of a matinee screening—each moment is imbued with a quiet intimacy. For those fortunate enough to have shared a film with a parent, the memory is indelible—how special it is, how grateful we were to have gotten our busy parent alone in the dark with us for a few hours, an experience that makes the passage of time operate on a different level: slower, deeper, richer.

^{Katarina Zhu is the writer, director and star of Bunnylovr}

What of the titular bunny? It reminded me of one of the eight attributes of a short story that the American writer Joy Williams deemed essential: “An animal within to give its blessing.” Throughout the film’s breezy 86 minutes, the bunny, named Milk, mostly experiences shock. But in the end, it finds peace beside a cat named Cha. Viewers familiar with Chinese will recognise the significance of this rabbit-and-cat pairing: Milk Tea. It’s the kind of detail that enriches the film’s firmly second-generation immigrant perspective, making it feel both relatable and contemporary.

As an actress, Zhu is a natural screen presence, and as a director, she knows how to mediate the distance between viewer and subject—never too close or too far. The most insightful moment comes near the end, when she’s lying down, listening to a mindfulness meditation, and, in a moment of quiet introspection, she decides to masturbate. As she nears orgasm, images from the film—most of them violent—flash before her eyes, pushing her to climax, as if crossing a final threshold: the fence.

“I think I’m evil,” she says to a friend. “I feel like if I have any power, I abuse it.”

But the message Zhu assuredly crafts in this moment of self-love is that change and growth are possible, and that the bonds that sustain us can outlive the dead—allowing us to imagine a future where identity, art, and commerce unite in a film as solid as this.

How to cite: Nagendrarajah, Nirris. “The Good Girl: On Katarina Zhu’s Bunnylovr.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 9 Feb. 2025, chajournal.blog/2025/02/09/bunnylovr.

Nirris Nagendrarajah (he/him) is a Toronto-based writer whose work has appeared in paloma, Polyester, Fête Chinoise, In the Mood Magazine, Tamil Culture, in addition to Substack. He is currently at work on a novel about waiting. [All contributions by Nirris Nagendrarajah.]