On the surface, The Wild Goose Tale, Diao Yinan’s
follow-up to the excellent police procedural Black Coal, Thin Ice, followed a similar pattern in that both were
neo-noirs set against dreary, alienating backdrops; however, it couldn’t have been
a more dramatic departure formally. While it did have an intriguing, albeit
skeletal, narrative arc and noir tropes a dime a dozen, the film basks and even
revels in hyperstylized self-indulgence (mash-up of the self-conscious aesthetics
of Wong Kar-wai meets Luc Bresson / John Woo meets Robert Rodriguez and Zack
Snyder). It couldn’t have had a more enticing opening gambit either – a terse,
mysterious man with a hunted look, waiting for someone in a desolate
rain-washed night, is casually approached by an enigmatic woman asking for a
light, and then being informed that his wife couldn’t make it to the rendezvous
and hence she’s come instead. A couple of elaborate flashbacks, in turn, set up
their backstories – Zhou (Hu Ge) is a criminal on the run on account of having
a killed a cop post a turf allocation process that goes awry and escalates into
gang violence; Liu (Gwei Lun-mei) is a sex worker who was given the job of
finding Zhou’s estranged wife for collecting the bounty on his head. The third
segment covers the massive manhunt led by a dogged cop (Liao Fan) and their
futile flee across the town. The alternately captivating and exasperating film
is visually striking with its bleak, neon-lit images of grungy urban spaces,
while the languorous pacing and existential tone were interspersed with moments
of dazzling action sequences – a brawl in a hotel basement, a motorcycle race,
using umbrella as a lethal weapon, etc.
Director: Diao Yinan
Genre: Crime Drama/Neo-Noir
Language: Mandarin
Country: China
Commissioned by
Shanghai’s 2010 World Expo – a flummoxing irony given the disquieting portrayals
of China in his films – Jia Zhangke’s I
Wish I Knew was a sweeping, layered and ambitious portrayal of the complex,
dynamic and fascinating city of Shanghai, covering, over an expansive time
frame, its tumultuous past, evolving fortunes, diverse facets and variegated
shades. In a way, therefore, it was a companion piece to his magisterial
quasi-documentary 24 City – in that,
both provided broader sociopolitical commentaries using microcosmic approaches
and talking head interviews. The docu obliquely covered large swathes of Shanghai’s
history – from the 1982 Nanjing Treaty which established it as a throbbing port
city to the the epoch-making Cultural Revolution, from the erstwhile dominance of
gangster classes to massive wealth readjustments, from purges by the Kuomintang
nationalists in the pre-Communist era to the exodus to Hong Kong and Taiwan post
the advent of Communism, and, of course, the spectacular skyscraper filled
metropolis of today with a heady underbelly. Suffice it to say, it’s a
demanding watch, and necessitates historical and geopolitical awareness. The
compellingly narrated interviews ranged from political to personal, dramatic to
banal, and dispassionate to emotional, and were filled with amused chuckles,
humour, nostalgic evocations, bitterness, pathos and resignation. They were juxtaposed
with stunning (albeit, desolate) vistas of the city, including shots of Zhao
Tao silently observing the life around her with searching glances, and were accompanied
by an elegiac score. Cinema, interestingly, constituted a stirring element with
extensive references (and excerpts) ranging from Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Flowers of Shanghai to Wong Kar-wai’s Days of Being Wild, and from Fei Mu’s Spring in a Small Town to Antonioni’s Chung Kuo, China and a lot more.
Director: Jia Zhangke
Genre: Documentary/Political History
Language: Mandarin
Country: China
Diao Yinan’s expertly
crafted neo-noir police procedural Black
Coal, Thin Ice – exquisitely moody, dripping with atmosphere and
deliciously slow-burning – evoked impressions of the likes of Bong’s darkly
funny Memories of Murder and
Fincher’s gripping Zodiac, in that the
films’ elaborately constructed plots were hinged upon grisly crimes which occur
over many years; hence, along with the winding investigations that ensue, psychological
and existential effects of the time-frames on the protagonist(s) formed key
aspects. It begins in 1999 when, shortly after a painful marital separation –
the post-divorce coitus couldn’t help but remind me of the discomfiting opening
chapter in Ozon’s 5x2 – Detective
Zhang (Liao Fan) is assigned to investigate a gruesome murder, wherein the
victim’s dismembered body parts are found in coal plants across multiple cities
in China’s grungy north-east industrial belt; the investigation, however, ends
in disaster, and sends Zhang on a downward spiral. Fast forward 5 years later –
achieved using a blazing POV tracking shot – as the disgraced and alcoholic
Zhang, working in a security job, has a chance meeting with his former partner,
and is informed that the case might not be dead yet. And, the connecting thread
to these murders might just be an enigmatic femme fatale (Gwei Lun-Mei) who had
romantic ties to the various victims, and who Zhang can’t help but get drawn
to. The film’s extraordinary visual palette brilliantly captured the urban
desolation and alienation; that, combined with the quirky use of background
score – ranging from Straus’ waltz to disco tracks – and deliberately
off-kilter moments that regularly punctuated the narrative, made it a deceptively
radical work that succeeded as a solid genre film, a compelling mood piece and a
bleak sociopolitical commentary.
Director: Diao Yinan
Genre: Crime Drama/Neo-Noir/Police Procedural
Language: Mandarin
Country: China
The wry, subversive
and exhilarating Tony Erdmann –
written, produced and directed by Maren Ade – is a bitingly funny work despite
the bleak and poignant underlying layers. And, its disarming deadpan humour and
satirical jabs at the widespread malaise, banality and existential torpor at
the heart of corporate bombast, can make one laugh and wince in equal measures.
At the center of this delightful film – set in Bucharest which is patronized as
“up and coming”, in a globalized, borderless Europe – lies an absorbing and
idiosyncratic father-daughter relationship that was as absurdly dysfunctional as
it was strangely affecting. Ines (Sandra Hüller) is a senior consultant in a
management consultancy firm; she’s heavily betting on a high value assignment
where the strategy is to propose heavy outsourcing which is bound to cause significant
job cuts; she leads an emotionally divested life marked by highfalutin
presentations, professional grandstanding, pleasing clients at the cost of
one’s self-respect, vacuous affairs, and tolerating systemic sexism on account
of being a careerist woman in an exclusive white man’s world, as aptly reflected
by her coldly elegant apartment and the need to always appear sizzling despite
the severe stress within. Her dad Winfried (Peter Simonischek) – natural-born
anarchist, incorrigible prankster, outlandish in his choice of attires and
appearances, oblivious of phony etiquettes, and possessing a sense of old-world
empathy – couldn’t be more antithetical to her. Hence, when this divorced music
teacher decides to make a surprise visit to meet her daughter, the results are spectacularly
disruptive – more so when he dons an absurdly farcical alter-ego, presenting
himself as a freelance lifestyle coach. Both Hüller and Simonischek were
terrific in capturing their uproarious contrasts and their subtly evolving
seriocomic chemistry.
Director: Maren Ade
Genre: Drama/Comedy/Social Satire
Language: German
Country: Germany
In Drug War, his first movie made fully in
mainland China, Hong Kong filmmaker Johnnie To came all guns blazing with a
taut, kinetic and entertaining action crime thriller. As a reviewer aptly
observed, “there’s no room… for pretense or grandstanding, for any narrative
bombast or subtextual curlicues that don’t immediately propel us toward the
unusually bleak conclusion’, in this sleek, no-nonsense genre exercise packed
with a string twists, deceptions and revelations. At its most elemental this is
a tale of frenetic one-upmanships between its stoic protagonist and crafty
antagonist (unsurprisingly, both male) – Zhang (Sun Honglei), a laconic and
relentlessly driven cop, and Choi (Louis Koo), a drug dealer whose motives and
allegiances are never clear. The film starts with a dramatic and compelling
opening sequence that doesn’t waste a moment in grabbing one’s attention and
setting up rest of the narrative, viz. Choi, a high-level drug dealer, agreeing
to act as a snitch for Zhang and his squad, to bust a huge narcotics
trafficking operation, in order to avoid the death penalty that he’s otherwise
sure to get in China. Over the course of the next couple of sleepless days and
nights, Zhang must stay a step ahead of Choi through constantly outguessing and
outmaneuvering his imminently unreliable ally, as he goes deep into the
organized narcotics ring. What follows, therefore, is one tension-filled
setpiece after another – Zhang first enacting a powerful supplier and then as a
wealthy distributor; facing the wrath of two mute operators who unleash
hellfire with their submachine guns; outfoxing the kingpins into coming to the
forefront from the shadows; and finally, an elaborate, no-holds-barred climax
that this was always building up to.
Director: Johnnie To
Genre: Crime Thriller/Action
Language: Mandarin/Cantonese
Country: China
