Characteristics of art film include violations of traditional film techniques of unity, appointments and payoffs, character motivations and more. These violations are used intentionally to give a realistic depiction of life through subjective or objective verisimilitude and/or express an authorial message. Through techniques such as disunity and plot gaps, Lillian Wang illustrates in her art film, Still Life, how the main character is terrified of uncertainty and finds comfort in the repetitive nature of day to day life.
Calculated plot gaps play a significant role in establishing the idea that life is filled with uncertainties. This is displayed when the scene switches from the man in the garage to the scene of the man with the dinosaur toy. There is time left out and this exemplifies an instance of authorial expressivity. The filmmaker does this intentionally to create a sense of mystery and ambiguity surrounding the world outside the house. This technique is used in other instances such as between the car-by and the parental argument. Both of these plot gaps display how the events that occur outside of the house and more specifically, having to do with cars, are out of the man’s control. The author thus associates cars, keys, and the road as symbols of uncertainty.
Plot gaps are also used to imply recurrence; notably viewed in the jump cut that occurs after the man kisses his wife in the second dinner scene. The jump cut is supposed to imply that the same routine of a