Lorna Irvine reviews a thriller that might not be as great as the acclaim that has preceded it.
Diao Yi'nan's neo-noir thriller, winner of the Golden Bear at the prestigious Berlin International Film Festival, is a gritty, ominous drama at its best; as pockmarked with clichés as bullets at its worst.
In 1999, a body is discovered, having been chopped into pieces and thrown into a coal packing plant. The case is unresolved.
Fast-forward five years later, and former police detective Zhang (Liao Fan) is now an alcoholic, having failed in the force and now working as a security guard. Teaming up with his old detective friends, he finds a similar case unfolding, all linked to--what else?--a beautiful young widow, Wu Zhizhen (Gwei Lun-Mei), who works in a shabby laundry.
Predictably, Zhang needs his dry-cleaning done more often and becomes romantically entangled (if you can define joyless sex as romantic) with her. This, in spite of her sad-eyed loveliness and his resemblance to a disgruntled testicle. Wish fulfilment is thus served.
Of course there are endless, neon-lit tracking shots of punk kids; loners with cigarettes dangling from drawn faces and cackling prostitutes in fur coats.
But it's Yi'nan's sense of place and defiantly unglamorous small-town banality that makes the film watchable--and almost believable.
That, and Dong Jinsong's detailed cinematography, such as the incredible skating scene with both Mei and Fan gliding like swans across the ice.
Dir: Diao Yi'nan, China/Hong Kong 2014, 1 hr 46 mins
Black Coal, Thin Ice - Trailer: http://youtu.be/P7iwTGvpdus
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