Foreign Cinema Night
ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS (He Bian De Cuo Wu)
Wednesday, July 24th a 7:30 PM
$16 Public | $10 Members
Curated by Sahib Singh Bakshi
1990s small town China. A woman’s body washes up in the
local river. The chief of police, Ma Zhe, is tasked with heading up the
investigation. An obvious perp leads to a hasty arrest, though the mystery
lingers in Ma Zhe’s mind. What kind of darkness is truly at play here? In
director Wei Shujun’s murky throwback film noir, gritty, textured film
grain captures the pulpy proceedings, Torrents of rain envelop the characters
as they descend into madness in pursuit of the truth. Equal parts atmospheric
tour-de-force and beguiling puzzler, Only the River Flows is at
once a masterfully styled ode to a bygone cinematic era and a sharp-edged
portrait of provincial paranoia. (China, 2023, 101 min., color, DCP)
“Written and directed by Shujun Wei, the movie is less
a nail-biting thriller than a puzzle-like homage to the noir genre itself, with
echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville, Chinatown and Memories of Murder. But even more
so, it’s a portrait of Chinese society before the recent economic boom and in
the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests, at a time when citizens lead
repressed lives of quiet desperation.” — Jordan Mintzer, Hollywood
Reporter
“Imagine the gleaming surfaces of Park Chan-wook’s
terrific Decision to Leave stripped of romance, all scuzzed-up and grimy.
Imagine drilling down through Diao Yinan’s Berlin-winning Black Coal, Thin Ice
and finding unexpected seams of absurdist dark comedy. You are now somewhere in
the seamy offbeat world of Only the River Flows director Wei Shujun’s inventive
riff on Asian-noir that gives the expanding subgenre something its Chinese
contributions often lack: a pitch-black sense of humour.” — Jessica
Kiang, Variety
