“We need to eliminate a stereotype”: Director Wei Shujun on Chinese film noir Only the River Flows | Film

A A village, a murder and a chain-smoking detective. The basic elements of the stark new procedural, Only the River Flows, are familiar. But as the mysteries and secrets pile up, this spellbinding Chinese film noir transports the viewer into a world of uncertainty that made it a surprise hit in China. Its precocious young director hopes Western audiences will be just as captivated.

Wei Shujun, originally from Beijing, speaks via video from Los Angeles. “There is no film where the story is not intentional,” he says. But when it comes to the fate of a Chinese film in Western cinemas, he is less certain. Drawing international attention to Chinese films is difficult, he says: “In mainstream Western culture, when you introduce Chinese culture, you have to eliminate a stereotype. Not all Western audiences know what is new in China, or their understanding of China is limited, so their impression of China is that of a kung fu movie. Some people think that Chinese people still have this long braid.” He is referring to the hairstyle, with a shaved forehead and a long braid, that was mandatory for men during the Qing Dynasty. “There is still a long way to go to introduce Chinese cinema to Western audiences.”

Wei has been more successful than most in breaking into the international scene. Born in Beijing in 1991, he began his acting career at the age of 14. He later studied at the Communication University of China, a place known for producing on-screen talent, but decided to move behind the camera. As a teenager, he was “very interested in the atmosphere of the team. I thought it was a utopian group. People from different places come together quickly, then get excited together, get tired together. They go their separate ways at the end, leaving behind a DVD. I hope people who see the content of this DVD can one day feel empathy for the creators.”

But as a college student, he realized he wanted to create his own stories, not star in others’. He made his first feature, Duck Neck, in 2016, followed by a short film, On the Border, in 2018, about a Korean-Chinese man who aspires to move to South Korea, which won the Special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Since then, Wei has become the only Chinese director of his generation to be selected three times at Cannes, with his latest film competing in the Un Certain Regard section.

Only the River Flows is an adaptation of a novel by avant-garde writer Yu Hua. Set in the rural town of Banpo in the 1990s, the story follows Ma Zhe, a police detective played by Zhu Yilong. Zhu is part of the “little fresh meat” tribe, an internet term for extremely handsome and delicate male celebrities. But for Only the River Flows, he underwent a dramatic transformation to play an idealistic but jaded detective investigating the murder of a woman whose body is found by the river. With his boss eager to close the case and his pregnant wife neglected at home, Ma Zhe is under pressure to keep things simple and blame the local madman who, at one point, is arrested covered in blood. But Ma Zhe doesn’t want to follow him, which sends him on a journey into the inner life of his small community.

“His duty is to find out what’s going on in the case and who the murderer is, and that’s no problem. But as time goes by, we discover more and more secrets about people, and those secrets develop little by little,” Wei explains.

Wei is not one to resist the pressure to keep it simple. He shot on 16mm, which he was told would be difficult and expensive, not least because there were no labs in China that could handle the film. But he persisted, and the result is a grainy, retro look that adds to the film’s noir-style texture. Wei’s efforts have paid off in China, where the film has been a surprise hit at a box office usually dominated by nationalist blockbusters. The film earned 309m yuan (£34.1m) at the Chinese box office after its release in October last year.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the film is the way it suggests that Ma Zhe himself is losing touch with reality. In a fit of rage, he sabotages his wife’s puzzle by throwing away some of the pieces, only to discover later that it is complete. The police academy certificate he claims to have appears not to exist. Ma Zhe’s police office is set up in an abandoned cinema, raising the question of whether the entire investigation is a gimmick. “A detective novel is supposed to be based on rationality and logic,” We explains. But in Yu Hua’s “anti-genre narrative,” there is a “different understanding of rationality… we think about the limits of rationality. I found that very appealing.”

Further research by Chi Hui Lin