It’s become something of a movie fashion to forestall the title credits until well after an establishing sequence, if not deeper into the film. But when the title appears onscreen in Blue Sun Palace, at the half-hour point, there’s nothing self-consciously stylish about it: It marks a dramatic, ground-shifting change in perspective, a gut-punch of a narrative fracture, and one that writer-director Constance Tsang executes with assurance.

At the helm of her first feature, Tsang has made a sharp and tender story about dislocation, centering on a trio of hardworking Chinese immigrants in New York. In the movie’s first 30 minutes, Tsang draws us into the intimate orbit of her expatriate characters: a construction company employee and two colleagues at a massage parlor. Then, the sudden absence of one of them sets everything askew. Absence is the current that drives the narrative: absence from family, from homeland, from purpose. The world these characters inhabit, within an enclave of Flushing, Queens, is a place of in-between, captured in the evocative half-light of Norm Li’s cinematography, suggesting the cool-hot glow of the title’s blue sun. The poignant chords of Sami Jano’s elegantly lean score further fuel the angsty mood.

The Blue Sun Palace is a restaurant outside the movie’s main New York setting, making its appearance late in the proceedings. It’s in another, unnamed restaurant that the film kicks off, without ceremony, in a remarkable sequence. The eatery itself is barely seen, Li’s camera moving between Hunan native Didi (Xu Haipeng) and Cheung (Lee Kang Sheng), from Taiwan, holding them close as they dig into spicy chicken and fall into each other’s gaze.

It will be a while before we know their names, or who they are to each other. There’s a sense of established emotional intimacy between them, but at the same time they’re still getting to know each other. Eventually, the likely deduction is that he’s been a client of hers at the massage parlor she runs. When he speaks of his loneliness, his words are muted and restrained, and her eyes well with compassion, the play of feeling on Xu’s face breathtaking. This is not your standard first date. But it is a turning point, the infatuation deepening during an entranced karaoke duet. Didi and Cheung’s morning-after pillow talk is a beautifully played depiction of awakening and connection, mischievous and light even as it delves into the weightier territory of hopes and dreams, a conversational turn sparked by a calendar photo on Didi’s wall.

For Didi, some of those dreams involve Amy (Wu Ke-Xi), her closest friend at the massage parlor and the third key character. Amy is a gifted cook, and she and Didi talk of opening a restaurant together. In the meantime, they, along with Josie (Murielle Hsieh) and Fei (Zheng Lisha), spend their days and nights massaging the bodies of their male customers. A sign on the front door warns, “No Sexual Services,” but exceptions are made — sometimes grudgingly. And, as one tense scene demonstrates, not every client is respectful, to put it mildly.

As to the business’ unseen proprietor — it’s unlikely that the four women have ownership stakes — the movie offers no information or hints. There are a couple of other instances where Tsang could have made the narrative details less hazy, although these lingering questions don’t unmoor the story or lessen its impact.

What is clear is the bond among the parlor’s four women, the sisterly humor that gets them through the workaday hours and helps them withstand the overall sense of displacement. In ways both obvious and offhand, they nurture one another. The feast Amy prepares for Lunar New Year evokes fond and tearful memories of home for Josie. In the here and now, Didi’s maternal warmth is the glue holding everything together. But things break apart, and, as one character notes, “It’s funny how quickly the people you love become strangers.”

Picking up the story after a specific cataclysm and an unspecified length of time, Tsang turns her focus to the question of how to go on, and whether devotedness can devolve into clinging to what’s gone. Amy, obsessed with repairing a ceiling leak, worries it like a wound. Cheung, who has only one friend at work (Leo Chen), fields mirthless calls from his wife and daughter in Taiwan that are always about money, nothing else. When he takes Amy to the restaurant from the opening scene, you might call it a dramatic version of an Annie Hall joke, the bit where Alvy’s attempt to duplicate the romantic hilarity of a lobster dinner with Annie falls numbingly flat with another woman. Cheung’s disappointment aside, for Amy the fraught dinner gives way to the simplest and most difficult realization of all: “I just need to change something.”

While Xu’s compelling vibrancy suffuses Blue Sun Palace, her co-stars offer thornier portrayals. Playing in an unpredictable register, Wu (Nina Wu) gives pulsing life to Amy’s wary brittleness and its eventual melting. Lee, the longtime muse of Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang, carries Cheung’s yearning and joy, his guilt and sorrow, in a performance that’s all the more gripping for being measured and contained.

As to the resolution of these characters’ story, it remains an open question in the subtly moving final scenes. In massage parlor reception areas and backrooms, working-class restaurants and karaoke bars, Tsang and her strong cast, with superb contributions from production designer Evaline Wu Huang, have captured something evanescent and life-giving, and grounded it in kitchen clatter and workplace chatter, the gritty day-to-day.

On his third go-round as guest host of “Saturday Night Live,” Jake Gyllenhaal presided over the 49th season finale with everything going for him. His lead role in the Prime Video revival of “Road House” was well-received. He’s still getting bad-boy mileage out of “All Too Well,” Taylor Swift’s 10-minute take down of him. And his new series “Presumed Innocent” for Apple TV+ will be out next month.

But is he funny? The night’s grab bag of sketches, several of which required full-throated singing from the actor, made a strong case that maybe Gyllenhaal is one of those actors who is presumed (innocently?) to have a strong sense of humor due to one-offs like his classic “Mr. Music” bit in “John Mulaney & The Sack Lunch Bunch” until it’s actually time to perform comedy in a live setting like “SNL.”

The season finale was rough, folks, and not because of giggles or any technical problems. You couldn’t blame the writing completely because there were some novel premises along the way and some decent jokes. But in at least half of the sketches where the host was driving the sketch, line deliveries felt off or flat and the audience response seemed muted. These included a disastrous one about an uphill bicyclist interrupting a couple (Mikey Day and Chloe Fineman) mid-breakup, a filmed “Scooby-Doo” parody that was more gory and gross than funny, a customer service sketch targeting Southwest Airlines and a domestic scene about a father threatening his daughter’s boyfriend after sneaking a cookie.

Better were sketches about an NYPD press conference meant to protect character actors (in which Jon Hamm made a cameo), a dance revue featuring beautiful girls and very plain boys, and a late sketch about a high-voiced tavern dweller named Snake Eyes (James Austin Johnson). Johnson book-ended the show with that performance and a cold open as former President Trump, while a “Weekend Update” joke swap once again went well past the line of good taste. A title card near the end of the show honored actor Dabney Coleman, who died this week.

Gyllenhaal gave it some real energy, but given that this was the last episode of the season, even his enthusiastic singing couldn’t save the episode from feeling disappointing. Speaking of singing, this week’s musical guest Sabrina Carpenter performed her viral hit “Espresso” and a mix of “Feather” and “Nonsense,” though she ended the latter with some risque new lyrics for the show.

The last cold open of the season returned to politics. Johnson did his Trump impression, showing the former president at his new home: a barricade outside a Manhattan courthouse. The embattled politician complained about his trial (“They say very mean things about me while I am trying to sleep.”) and he remarked that the gag order placed on him “sounds like a challenge on ‘RuPaul.’” In the course of the speech, Trump asked his supporters to dox a juror who appears on camera (“She’s juror No. 9, but to me she’s like a six, maybe.”) and revealed that the worst sentence he could get is more time at the White House; he’d rather lose, call the election rigged and raise more money for “Stop the Steal.” He dangled the possibility of revealing his “Veepee,” who could be Tim Scott (Devon Walker), Kristi Noem (Heidi Gardner, holding a gun and a toy puppy), or Hannibal Lecter (Michael Longfellow), who Trump said was “giving me Pence vibes.” The former president promised it’ll be the “Summer of Trump with Trump Espresso,” a Jan. 6-style event in July and a Jewish edition of the Bible he calls “Trump Torah.”

Gyllenhaal’s monologue focused on him hosting the finale of the 49th season, instead of the more prestigious slot of the episode that will kick off the historic 50th season. So, the actor passionately sang a version of “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men with help from cardigan-wearing cast members Ego Nwodim (who sadly did not play Rep. Jasmine Crockett this week), Kenan Thompson, Walker and Punkie Johnson. Gyllenhaal sang that Pedro Pascal, Zendaya and even recent host Ryan Gosling turned down the gig. He sang, “It’s been 49 years, over 900 shows, costumes and wigs and a room full of blow.”

Best sketch of the night: Don’t think too hard about a retailer’s cheap goods

A mock ad for Xiemu (a parody of problematic Chinese retailers Temu and Shein) promises fast fashion at incredibly low prices. How is it so cheap? “Don’t worry about it,” the ad says. They’re not made with forced labor and no prisoners are involved. “Why bring that up?” one of the actors in the ad asks. The ad also coyly denies long working hours, and promises all workers are paid, “Even ones with wrong religion.” The clothes and jewelry soon fall apart, cause rashes or induce lead poisoning for the fashion models in the ad. When one of them (Nwodim) asks, “Is this shady?” the response is, “If it was, would you stop buying?” Everyone responds, “No.”

Also good: There’s something about these boys

The daffiest sketch of the night may have been this old-timey musical revue that at first featured a trio of ladies (Nwodim, Fineman and Sarah Sherman), but then shifts gears as the host (Gyllenhaal) sings an introduction for “beautiful boys, luscious salty boys,” who are all wearing variations of khaki pants or shorts and gray shirts. Two patrons watching the show (Thompson and Gardner) are at first unimpressed (“It’s like they didn’t even try”) but are soon captivated by the story of each boy, one sporty, one a scholarly virgin and another the son of a burger scion. It’s very silly, but the naughty wordplay in the song is clever, and the crane shot with the boys swinging their legs in the air toward the camera is sublime. Bonus points for the high notes Gyllenhaal and Thompson both hit at the conclusion.

‘Weekend Update’ winner: Another Colin Jost-Michael Che joke-off

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Marcello Hernandez and Thompson were great as cicadas returning to mate and scream after years underground, but of course it was Jost and Che’s joke-off, where they write jokes for each other that they must read for the first time on camera, that stole the show. Che admitted at the start of the joke-off that the civil rights leader who sat in on December’s installment was an actor. This time, he said, he invited a real-life rabbi, “Rabbi Jill,” who appears to be Jill Hausman from the Actors Temple in New York. Hausman grimaced but stayed almost silent throughout the segment as Che and Jost read jokes about protesters at a Jerry Seinfeld commencement speech (Jost: “The only chant you’ll hear from me is ‘Free Weinstein!’”) and one for Che about Pope Francis saying sexual pleasure is a gift from God, but in response to a question about altar boys. Things got worse with a joke about texting middle school kids with sexual innuendo, a dig at Jost’s wife Scarlett Johansson‘s voice from the movie “Her” being used by ChatGPT (Jost: “Without that body, what’s the point of listening?”), and the introduction of a puppet dressed in Jewish religious wear. Jost was forced to read some antisemitic material in front of the rabbi while holding the puppet, but it was Che who was most roundly defeated by being forced to start a public feud with rapper Kendrick Lamar. He read, “I want to call out the biggest b— of all, Kendrick Lamar. No! Or should I say littlest. Your war with Michael Che is just beginning.” A visibly shaken, yet laughing, Che muttered, “I don’t like that one bit.”