‘Only The River Flows’: Cannes Review

Dir/scr: Wei Shujun. China. 2023. 101mins.

This enigmatic, progressively more engrossing noir is director Wei Shujun’s third consecutive feature to premiere at Cannes in three years, after Striding Into The Wind (2020 Cannes label) and Ripples Of Life (2021 Directors’ Fortnight). Third time lucky. Structurally inventive, if not downright format-twisting, it takes a Jacob’s Ladder to 1990s China, where a beleaguered police detective tries so hard to unravel a killing that he spins himself into seeming madness. If that wasn’t enough to recommend it, his boss has commandeered the failing local cinema to house his investigation – all the world’s a stage, after all, and DoP Changma is a star player, shooting on film.

 A reminder of the alternative narrative perspectives and cinematic sophistication that have moved cinema forward in the past

The result is that Only The River Flows feels like it’s coming straight at the audience from the time in question – a post-Mao, mid-Deng Xiaoping reforms Southern China with its timber houses and tiled roofs: the type of place that no longer exists, except in the rich imagination of Wei (adapting the source novella by Yu Hua). The country is changing: collectivism and Mao suits rub up against Detective Inspector Ma Zhe’s (Zhu Yilong) blouson leather jacket. Like the pleasing visuals, though, not everything in Wei’s narrative is immediately crystal clear. Over time, this looks very much like the type of film that will draw repeated views on a prestige streaming service, after what should be a healthy festival run and, perhaps, select theatrical play.

In the town of Peishui, detective inspector Ma (Zhu, from 2022’s hit Lighting Up The Stars, giving a distinct air of Tony Leung) is charged with investigating the murder of ‘Granny No 4’ in a neighbouring village of only 50 families. Peishui itself is in flux: an opening sequence shows a small boy in a Teamsters jacket progressing through the rooms of an abandoned house, only to open the verandah onto a giant digger churning up old houses and their collective past. China is on the move: the dragon is awake.

After that, Only The River Runs starts out as plain as any premise could be: Granny, a knife, a wavy-haired woman and a small boy who saw something. Agatha Christie would be delighted, especially when it transpires that Granny had ‘adopted’ a ‘madman’ after being widowed. At the police station, Ma is very much the favourite son of the table-tennis-playing Chief of Police (Hou Tianlai) who insists his protege decamps to the local Wanning Cinema, a vast edifice which is in the process of being shut down. Ma sets up his own office in the main projector room while down on the stage, his team is busy stabbing animal carcasses to see which knife is the best fit for killing granny.

Meanwhile, Ma’s wife (Chloe Maayan, best actress winner for Three Husbands at the 2019 Hong Kong Film Awards) is pregnant. He’s distracted; she’s busy with a peculiar giant jigsaw puzzle of a mother and child. Bit by bit, almost before the viewer has realised it, Wei is reassembling the elements in a jigsaw of his own: a puzzle in which Ma’s missing Merit award from his last posting could be vital. Day becomes night, fact becomes fiction and dreams become nightmares in a world that is shifting with our perspectives.

Thanks to an extended lockdown and the ebb and tide of censorship issues, Chinese cinema has been missing from the world stage for some time. Only The River Runs, while ostensibly a noir, is a reminder of the alternative narrative perspectives and cinematic sophistication that have moved cinema forward in the past. In another year, this nimble, opaque work could have sat well in Cannes Competition (as opposed to Un Certain Regard). Technically, while production design is pleasing and the cinematography is genuinely star-making, the film can over-rely on Chopin for emotional beats, which smooth editing from Mattieu Laclau doesn’t always need. That’s a small enough criticism, though, to make no real difference to the future of this enigmatic film – and the dilemma of a gumshoe lost in a particular time.