This is a form over substance Chinese neo noir. It's a film of little dialog and endless perfectly composed shots.
The film is te story of a miner in a town deep in China. Women are scarce. The whole city seems to be tight lipped men. When a woman blows into town our miner falls for her and gets dragged to the dark side.
When I say this is form over content, I mean it. This is all about the look and the mood. Almost all of the dialog comes in after the title shows up an hour into the film. Ita film of images. The narrative is largely a thin pencil line. There are few details and we have to fill in the void with what we have learned in other films.
I drifted off.
While the award worthy images delight the eye, there isn't enough beyond that to keep us engaged. It doesn't help that the film echoes the work of other directors like Bi Gan or Zhangke Jia. We have been here before and we know it.
While not bad, its never fully compelling.
No comments:
Post a Comment