(Reviews of Only the River Flows; and Hounds)
ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS.
Acting from the age of 14, Wei Shujun decided he wanted to tell his own stories and made his directorial debut with Duck Neck (2016). He followed this with Crazy Gods (2017) before studying sound recording at the Communication University of China. His thesis short, On the Border (2018), won a prize at Cannes, where he became the first post-90s Chinese director to have three consecutive films selected for competition: Striding Into the Wind (2020), Ripples of Life (2021), and Only the River Flows (2023).
It's typically frustrating for arthouse followers that, while the first two screened at the London Film Festival (which is hardly accessible for all), only the latter has secured a general release in the UK. One can only hope that the success of this neo-noir adaptation of Yu Hua's avant-garde novella, Mistakes By the River, will prompt someone to showcase the 33 year-old Wei's back catalogue and release his two 2024 titles, Don't Worry, Be Happy and White Crane Spreads Its Wings.
Proceedings open with the Albert Camus quote: `I have made myself destiny. I have assumed the foolish and incomprehensible face of the Gods.' We then head to Peishui City in Jiangdong Province in December 1995 to follow a small boy playing cops and robbers in a building earmarked for demolition. He finds the body of Granny Four, who has been knifed by the river and Captain Ma Zhe (Zhu Yilong) comes to investigate from his new office in the projection room of the abandoned Wanning Cinema. Eagerly giving his evidence to Ma, the boy goes home with his world-weary father, while Ma examines the corpse.
More interested in table tennis than crime, the chief (Hou Tianlai) wants the case closed quickly after Ma learns that the victim had taken in a homeless man known only as Madman (Kang Chunlei). He seems harmless, however, and Ma is more interested in a cassette he finds in a handbag left at the scene. Between the songs, this contains messages from a woman to her lover and the background sound of a train send Ma and assistant, Xie (Tong Linkai), to a factory, where he finds accountant Ling Qian (Liu Baisha), who is having an affair with poetry teacher, Hong Wang (Moxi Zishi). He begs Ma to hide the fact he was supposed to meet Ling at the river and that she forgot her bag in fright after seeing the body.
His description of a woman with wavy hair leads to hairdresser Xu Liang (Wang Jianyu), who has a past conviction for indecency and is worried he'll be implicated. Ma reports his findings to the chief, who asks him to find a certificate to back his merit award application and pregnant wife, Bai Jie (Chloe Maayan), barely looks up from doing a jigsaw as Ma searches their apartment for it.
He's called out in the pouring rain when Hong's body is found beside the river. Ma delivers his suicide note to Ling, who lives with her domineering mother. Over dinner, Ma tells Xie that they must find the wavy-haired woman, as she is the prime suspect. At that moment, they see Madman through the window brandishing the murder weapon and they capture him after a chase down some narrow alleys.
Despite the chief considering the case closed, Ma has misgivings. He revisits Xu's shop and he seems ill at ease. Shortly afterwards, he's rushed to hospital following an overdose and Ma finds a dress and a wavy wig hidden underneath his Xu's bed. But, as he files away the documents, the Madman escapes from his secure hospital and the boy who had found Granny Four is killed with a rock to the head on the riverbank. An eyewitness insists he saw Madman commit the crime and Ma is under pressure from the chief to capture him. He is also feeling the strain because the doctor has rather callously told Bai that there is a 10% chance that her baby will have a genetic disorder and Ma urges her to abort because he doesn't want his child turning out like Madman. She declares that he has no say over what happens to her body and, when she accuses him of being a typical man, he flushes some pieces from her mother and child jigsaw puzzle down the toilet.
Coming to thank Ma after being released from psychiatric care, the closeted Xu commits suicide by jumping from a cinema window and landing on the cop's car. Traumatised by a nightmare featuring all the victims in the case and a burning cine projector, Ma tends his resignation. The chief refuses to accept, so Ma turns the case over to Xie, who hopes he can repay the faith shown in him.
After posing in his uniform for some photos with Bai, Ma gets drunk and chases Madman to a derelict temple after he follows him home from the bar. Ma thinks he fires four shots and tells the chief that Madman planned the whole thing. But the chief points out that Ma's gun didn't fire the number of shots he claimed. However, he finally seems to nab Madman when Ma wades into the river and turns to see the suspect waiting for him on the bank. He puts up no resistance when Ma knocks him unconscious and he is commended at an official ceremony for his courage and dedication in cracking the case.
A year later, Ma and Bai bathe their infant in soft sunlight. As at several other points in the story, Beethoven's `Moonlight Sonata' plays on the soundtrack, as the boy turns to fix the camera with an impassive stare, which leaves the audience to wonder how he has turned out, now he's in his twenties.
There's a Chandleresque feel to this police procedural, as though Ma Zhe experiences a Big Sleep, which prevents him from being able to recognise the open-and-shut nature of the case and which leads to him becoming confused by the facts, characters, and circumstances that accumulate around it. Even his own domestic situation impinges upon his approach to an investigation that takes on an even more dreamscapish aspect by virtue of the fact that his new office is located in an old cinema.
As Wei suggested in an interview, the problem Ma faces is that the motivation for the murders remains unclear and the trouble he faces with digging for evidence that will make sense of them is that `the deeper you are the less light there is'. The convention of crime films and fiction is that the guilty party has a reason for killing. But, scripting with Kang Chunlei, Wei denies the audience the satisfaction of knowability by emphasising the chaotic nature of life and the fact that, as with Bai's jigsaw, there are always going to be missing pieces.
The 1990s setting will mean more to those au fait with Chinese history, as this was a decade of momentous socio-economic change and the sense that this insular little town is on edge is reinforced by the abundance of rundown buildings and the relentlessness of the rain. Zhang Menglun's art direction and Zhiyuan Chengma's 16mm imagery enhance the mood of moral murkiness, which is compounded by Matthieu Laclau's rigorously non-linear editing and the unsettlingly hallucinatory reveries experienced by the increasingly defective detective.
Setting the homicide incident room in a cinema may be a touch self-conscious, but it complements Wei's references to the stylised violence of Brian De Palma, South Korean K-Crime, the deadpan absurdism of David Lynch and Jim Jarmusch, and the realist intensity of Jia Zhangke and Diao Yinan. There's even a hint of Gregory Peck in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945) in the dream sequence and the way the excellent Zhu Yilong plays Ma's psychological struggles. It's as though Montgomery Clift had replaced Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe to ensure a little Method in the madness.
HOUNDS.
A graduate of La Fémis in Paris, Moroccan Kamal Lazraq returned to his home city to make the shorts, Drari (2011) and Moul Lkelb (aka The Man With a Dog, 2014). Casablanca also provides the setting for Hounds, a bleak caper that pitches the tenets of Islam against the code of the street and which earned the feature debutant the Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard at Cannes.
Gangster Dib (Abdellah Lebkiri) is so furious when one of his fighting dogs is killed after a showdown by the `mute man' (Mohamed Hmimsa) - a sidekick of his detested rival, Jellouta (Mohammed Kharbouchi) - that he summons Hassan (Abdellatif Masstouri) to abduct the culprit and bring him to his lair. Ignoring the misgivings of son Issam (Ayoub Elaïd) that the van they've borrowed is an unlucky shade of red, Hassan bundles the target into the boot and drives off.
Unfortunately, the tied and hooded fellow dies en route and Dib orders the pair to dispose of the body by dawn or they'll all be in dead lumber. Issam wants to go to the cops, but Hassan reminds him that they won't be able to look after his grandmother if they're sent to prison. Besides, they can't leave a trail leading back to Dib. So, they drive into the countryside to as Maj'd (Abdelhak Saleh) to bury the mute man under a fig tree, as he had in the past. However, he's retired and wants no further hassle, although he does lend them a shovel and advises them to dig a grave in one of the abandoned fields nearby.
Having decided against dumping the cadaver in a well, Hassan starts to dig. But the ground is hard and they're bickering attracts the attention of some farmers, who chase them away. The van only just restarts, but it soon develops a fault and Issam has to push it all the way to a garage. The occupant is suspicious and reluctantly lets them have some water for the engine. But he has no petrol and scares them off when he starts to pray loudly.
Hassan remembers his fisherman friend, Larbi (Lahcen Zaimouzen), who would be able to dump the body at sea. After a nervous encounter at a roadblock (that culminates in the duty cop taking the figs that Maj'd had given them), they find Larbi drunk in a bar and pay his tab before trying to sober him up. He tells them that he is still working in order to help his children complete their studies, but hopes to be able to retire with his wife.
Undeterred by the fact he's not smuggling contraband, Larbi agrees to help for a fee. He also insists that the body has been properly washed, as he doesn't want to breach burial customs. Hassan fibs that everything has been taken care of and Larbi sets off alone to weight the corpse and chuck it over the side. However, he's gone for some time and Issam spots the small craft drifting back to shore. The mute man is still there, but there's no sign of Larbi and Issam is aghast that he now has two dead people on his conscience.
While he goes to an underground rap club to find Lghoul (Amine Aboudrar), Hassan has a nightmare that Larbi knocks on the van door to ask for his payment. In fact, it's a teenage beggar and he gives him some cash and accepts his prayer that Allah will forgive him. As Lgoul's associate wants too much cash to dispose of the corpse, Issam agrees to work for him in return for the name of someone who can help. The nightmare has spooked Hassan, however, and he insists they go home to wash the deceased and his mother (Khadija Merdi Elloualidine) supervises the ritual. Convinced his father has lost his nerve and is going to screw things up, Issam drives off without him.
Arriving at the home of a man who has supposedly agreed to have the body buried in his garden, Issam realises he's been set up and Jellouta's henchmen take him to his headquarters. Realising his son's in trouble, Hassan asks Dib to rescue him and he rounds up a posse to take care of Jellouta's thugs. They prevail and Dib takes the mute man to a furnace and just about keeps his temper when he learns that the corpse needs dismembering to fit into the flames. When Hassan and Issam prove too squeamish, Dib has to hire a butcher, who demands a high fee. Father and son watch in silence before walking home as dawn breaks. They scrub thoroughly, but know there are things the water can never wash away. Meanwhile, across the city, a dog scrabbles in a bin bag on a rubbish dump and trots off with a charred arm in its mouth.
Such gallows humour studs this `after hours' caper, which would doubtless have met with the approval of Groucho, Chico, and Harpo, who had problems of their own in Archie Mayo's A Night in Casablanca (1946). The copious references to religion ensure that this is very much a dark night of the soul, although Lazraq implies that Hassan and Issam's ordeal is far from over. After all, they each owe Dib an arm and a leg.
Having based his story on Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thieves (1948) and Pier Paolo Pasolini's Accatone (1960), Lazraq hired Ayoub Elaïd because of his resemblance to a street thug in the latter. Although he took some persuading, Elaïd introduced the director to Abdellatif Masstouri, who was vending grilled sardines when he was cast (although he had previously travelled through Europe, been a Taekwondo champion, and done time behind bars). Shot chronologically to simplify things for the duo, their exchanges were largely improvised, which meant that Lazraq had to keep calling for retakes and he admits that it was only during the editing process that he realised how effective the performances had been. His own evocation of their cut-throat, transactional environs is even more impressive.
Wiry, with a scruffy beard and unkempt mop of hair, Masstouri's Hassan is a serial loser, who has been to jail before. But he is eager to take care of his elderly mother and prefers to get backhanders for doing favours for Dib than seek honest, but poorly paid work like Issam, who looks with a mix of contempt and envy at the suited and booted man across the café who had unsuccessfully interviewed for a call centre job because his French wasn't good enough. Loyally, Issam sticks by his father, despite not having much respect for him, and finds himself in hot water because he trusts him when he says he needs help with a little job.
Neither man is sufficiently streetwise to prosper. But they survive, which is more than the poor mute man manages, as he signs his death warrant by reluctantly obeying an order from the ruthless Jellouta, who was the only person who had ever shown him any kindness. Dib also has a soft spot, as he is crushed as he pats the paw of his dead dog on the vet's table. But emotion is seen as weakness in this pitiless and largely godless milieu, which is why Issam strikes out on his own when the conscience-stricken Hassan insists on doing right by the mute man by preparing his body for burial. Ultimately, in this dog-eat-dog world, the stray who finds the remains on the tip isn't fussy about their condition.
One of the film's few daylight scenes, this is photographed by Amine Berrada with a detachment that contrasts with the numerous twitchy handheld close-ups (many shot in the cramped van) that emphasise the tightness of the spot in which Hassan and Issam find themselves. The darkness affirms how haplessly they are staggering around the city, as they seek a solution to a problem of their own making and one that could so easily have been avoided. However, a combination of bad decision making and unfortunate happenstance keeps them in the mire, with the braying saxophones and clarinets in Pauline Rambeau de Baralon's splendid score seeming to mock them like the donkey that blocks their path early on and convinces Hassan that they are being tormented by a djinn. Torn between superstition and faith and trapped in an endless cycle of poverty and crime, the pair appear doomed, for as someone once said in this very city, `it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world'.
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