Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
Set in China's underworld, this tale of love and betrayal follows a dancer who fired a gun to protect her mobster boyfriend during a fight. On release from prison 5 years later, she sets out to find him.
Jia Zhangke's crime romance is a sweeping, melancholic portrait of China's transformation across two decades, anchored by Zhao Tao's extraordinary central performance. The plot unfolds across three distinct chapters with real emotional weight and structural ambition. Cinematography is exceptional — Jia's use of shifting aspect ratios to mark different eras is quietly powerful, and the Fengjie sequences carry the grandeur of a vanishing landscape. Acting, particularly Zhao Tao, is among the finest in contemporary Chinese cinema. Novelty is above average but not singular — it builds on Jia's own established aesthetic and thematic territory (Platform, Still Life), so while distinctive in execution, it feels more like a refinement than a departure. The ending, while tonally consistent, is somewhat muted and ambiguous in a way that may feel inconclusive rather than earned for many viewers.