Film review of “Only the River Flows” – a stunning Chinese crime thriller full of shadows

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Murder is a global language, and the world still loves film noir. Both points are well portrayed in the intoxicating Chinese cop opera Only the river flowswhere the darkness of the night is only broken by the flashlights of the police, while the shadows outshine the sun. The year is 1995 in a fictional provincial town. The skyscrapers are not yet there, but the bulldozers are. And the case at the heart of the story falls to chain-smoking police detective Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong), who is poring over cassette tapes.

The crime takes place in a riverside suburb: an elderly woman is found dead. A bulky loner seems to be the likely culprit. But such obvious guilt is rarely the whole story. And indeed, Ma Zhe's investigations drift in other directions. There are many secrets among the neighbors. Then another body turns up.

Out of habit, we expect a Holmesian Eureka. The adaptation of Yu Hua's novel Error on the riverDirector Wei Shujun takes a different approach. Here, not every question mark is resolved into a clean point. Actual blurring drives Ma Zhe into obsession. A clue to the mood of the film is revealed when his investigations are performed in a disused cinema.

Appropriately as pure cinema, Only the river flows is stunning: eerie and dreamlike. An overture with children playing is a wonder. Another scene is a spitting image of the gaudy maestro Brian De Palma. And, oh: it never stops raining.

But Wei also ties his film to everyday reality. China's former one-child policy plays an important supporting role. If the film is a philosophy lesson about unknowable truths, it also features cynical police chiefs who simply want someone quickly closed.

The film was released in China last year and became a box office smash: no small feat for an arthouse movie shot on 16mm film that opens with a quote from Albert Camus. In the West, it might be tempting to see the masses flocking subversively to a portrait of flawed authority. But those flaws are surely three decades in the past. Either way, a simpler pleasure may well have been more influential. After seeing the film, Chinese viewers then flocked to social media to discuss the plot, a modern forum for an age-old question. No, but seriously, who did it?

★★★★☆

In British cinemas from 16 August