Only the River Flows

What appears to be a quickly solved murder case turns out to be something entirely else, in this excellent film noir-like film, set in the Chinese countryside in the 90s.

Director Shujun Wei returned to the Cannes Film Festival this year for the third time in a row with the masterpiece Only the River Flows. Once in the early 1990s, police inspector Ma Zhe (Yilong Zhu) is sent to a small town in China to investigate the murder of an old lady in a nearby village. What appears to be a quickly solved murder case turns out to be something else entirely, and Zhe becomes entangled in a network of strange villagers.

The camera work in the film is a pleasure, with textual, grainy images shot on analogue film, and gives the film an impressive genuine period palette. Thoughts go both to Bong Joon's Memories of a Murder (2003) and Erik Skjoldbjærg's Insomnia (1997), as the murder mystery keeps taking new turns.

«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 humor.»
– Jessica Kiang, Variety –

Jon Sæter

Director

Shujun Wei (b. 1991) is a director and screenwriter, and is seen as one of the leading stars of new Chinese cinema. He is the only director born after 1990 who has been selected to screen his films three times at the Cannes Film Festival. His newest film, Only the River Flows, was screened in the Un Certain Regard section of this year's festival.

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