I really loved Chinese director Diao Yinan’s neo-noir The Wild Goose Lake. I’ve seen it twice now, and it is definitely style over substance, in that I remember most fondly the images and sequences rather than the story itself. Purple neon hotel lighting engulfing a room where three thieves talk shop. A motorbike at night, its headlight cutting through the rain. A sting operation where a suspect is captured in the middle of a city square night market dance, undercover officers wearing the light-up shoes of the dancers.
Black Coal, Thin Ice (2014) is Yinan’s previous neo-noir mystery drama, and similar high style and genre codes operate within a sociological gaze of Chinese industrial areas. Here, the inciting crime are the severed limbs discovered wrapped up and packaged across the sorting queues in several coal mine factories. A grumpy detective Zhang (Liao Fan) stewing over a recent divorce is one of many assigned to the case. When a sudden shoot-out results in the death of suspects and officers, we cut forward in time several years later where Zhang is out of the force and an alcoholic. Only through a chance encounter with a colleague on a stake-out does Zhang get wind that the case has been resurrected through similar murders. Eventually it connects to the past victim’s widow Wu (Gwei Lun-mei), who quietly works in a dry cleaning shop.
Aspects of slow cinema are felt in the time spent watching Zhang watch Wu through the frosty urban streets, Wu’s face wrapped in a woolen scarf, invested with mysterious allure as Zhang becomes obsessed. In certain ways, there’s a Michael Douglas crime movie vibe (Basic Instinct, Black Rain) as Zhang becomes attracted to a woman connected to several murders, and despite warnings, pursues her. Often, it’s hard to parse if the movie identifies with Zhang’s misogyny, the way he tries to grab and hold onto his wife physically as she leaves him at a train station, echoed in his following of Zhang by ice skating. Eventually it feels as if the movie offers ambiguity in its final sequence, connecting to its original Chinese title that translates into ‘Daylight Fireworks.’ Not much is given away by the interior and downbeat characters, even when they flatly reveal themselves in urgings and confessions. Fan and Lun-mei were both in The Wild Goose Lake, and are very compelling, particularly Lun-mei’s resigned take on a femme fatale, which often feels like a consequence of the harrassment around her (including her sexist, interfering laundry boss).
Chilly and a bit detached, and yet absorbing through its growing evocation of neon-tinted scenes in the backseat of cars, or the dark and snowy streetscapes. Streamed on Tubi (US setting). Recommended.
VHS Tracking 