Sight&Sound - 04.2020

REVIEWS

April 2019 | Sight&Sound | 81

Reviewed by Tony Rayns
Back in the days before the Chinese government
cracked down on independent filmmaking (by
imposing huge fines on anyone who makes
and shows unapproved films), Diao Yinan
directed his debut feature Uniform (Zhifu, 2003),
in which a young slacker ‘borrows’ a police
uniform and finds himself empowered socially
and psychologically. Sixteen years later Diao’s
fourth feature The Wild Goose Lake (Nanfang
Chezhan de Juhui) inverts the idea: the plain-
clothes cops on the trail of a cop-killing gangster
dress up as disco-dancers and bikers to stake out
criminal hide-outs and beat local small-time
gangsters at their own games. Uniform remains
officially unreleased in China, while the new
film, posing as a straightforward noir thriller,
was given the longbiao (‘dragon mark’) seal of
approval by the censors and permitted, as a
French co-production, to compete in Cannes.
Diao graduated from the Central Academy
of Drama in Beijing, and knows a thing or two
about acting. He has even done a bit himself,
notably in Yu Likwai’s All Tomorrow’s Parties
(Mingri Tianya, 2003) and Jia Zhangke’s Ash Is
Purest White (Jianghu Ernü, 2018), but he first
got involved with Chinese movies as a
scriptwriter for Peter Loehr’s company Imar in
the late 1990s. In his time as a writer-for-hire
he specialised in social satire – the highpoint
was probably Zhang Yang’s Shower (Xizao,
1999), framed as a lament for the demise of
Beijing’s neighbourhood bath-houses – and
he’s carried that forward as one strand in his
own work as writer-director. But his main
interest is in assumed identities. All four of
his features to date have hinged on characters
who hide their ‘real’ characters and motives.
Lake goes one better than the genre
commonplace that cops and gangsters are
mirror images of each other. Here, the cops and
crims are literally indistinguishable: they dress
alike, think and behave the same way, adopt
the same strategies and speak the same local
dialect. (It’s Chinese as spoken in the currently
troubled city of Wuhan, although the film
doesn’t name its setting.) Diao underlines the
premise in the opening scenes: the town’s rival
gangs convene in the large basement room of a
hotel for a lecture-demonstration on the finer
points of motorcycle theft and then a map-based
proposal to assign ‘turf’ to individual gangs, and
our first glimpse of the cops some ten minutes
later shows them planning to tackle motorcycle
thefts by parcelling out streets and districts
in exactly the same way. The one difference
between the two sides emerges much later,
when several cops pose for a ‘trophy photo’ over
the corpse of a man they’ve just gunned down.
The gangsters are driven by vicious rivalry, but
they don’t ‘celebrate’ their victories like that.
The first half of the complicated plot is told
in flashbacks, shared by man-on-the-run Zhou
Zenong (played by Hu Ge, an actor-singer
from TV) and odd-woman-out hooker Aiai
(Taiwanese star Gwei Lunmei, also a lead in
Diao’s Black Coal, Thin Ice), with occasional
cutaways to police briefings. Zhou has killed a
cop by mistake; Aiai has been hired by Zhou’s
supposed friends to track down both him and

his estranged wife. Zhou looks and behaves

like a typical noir protagonist throughout, but

the plot ultimately turns on Aiai, whose real

feelings and motives remain ambiguous to the

end, although she does give Zhou a free blowjob

before sending him into a potentially fatal trap.

Diao delivers all the classic traits of film

noir – from the rain-sodden streets to the casual

brutality – with flair and gusto, and mounts

a string of spectacular set pieces, including a

brawl lit by a single, swinging light bulb and a

shootout watched by zoo animals. The imagery

and cutting are consistently arresting, but

it’s hard to shake the feeling that the visual

razzle-dazzle is a deliberate distraction from

underlying themes which might not have

got past the censor so easily. The allegorical

resonances are, of course, up for debate.

A town in southern China. Wounded and hiding, gang

leader Zhou Zenong is contacted by the singular

prostitute Aiai with a plan to meet his estranged wife

Yang Shujun. They exchange memories of recent events.

At a gathering of gangs to discuss dividing up local

turf, Zhou’s man Redhead killed a rival gangster in

an argument. Brother Ma tried to resolve the rivalry,

but his plan went wrong when Zhou mistook a cop

for a gangster and shot him. The police put a large

reward on Zhou’s head. Police chief Liu deployed his

plain-clothes men to the area around Wild Goose Lake,

where the rival gangs were lying low. Zhou’s friend

Huahua hired Aiai to find Zhou’s wife and bring her to

Junping Restaurant, just as Liu’s men launched a raid

on gangsters and killed Yang’s brother Yang Zhilie.

Back in the present, Zhou asks Aiai to turn him in for

the reward money and then hand it on to Yang Shujun;

they agree to meet up again at the lake to effect the

plan. At the lake, they make love on a boat. But when

Zhou goes to meet his wife he finds himself trapped by

his enemy Cat’s Eye. He gets away but is gunned down

by Liu’s men after a chase. Liu makes sure that Aiai

gets the reward and drives her to the bank – only to

see her rendezvous with Yang Shujun. The two women

walk off together, Aiai still clutching the bag of cash.

The Wild Goose Lake
Director: Diao Yinan

Produced by

Li Li

Shen Yang

Screenplay

Diao Yinan

Director of

Photography

Dong Jinsong

Editors

Kong Jinlei

Matthieu Laclau

Production Designer

Liu Qiang

Music

B6

Sound Design

Zhang Yang

Costume Designer

Li Hua

Production

Companies

He Li Chen Guang

International

Culture Media Co.,

Ltd, Omnijoi Media

Corporation Co., Ltd,

Tencent Pictures

Culture, Media Co.,

Ltd, Green Ray Films

(Shanghai) Co.,

Ltd and China Film

International Fund

present a Green Ray

Films (Shanghai)

Co., Ltd, Maisong

Entertainment

Investment

(Shanghai) Co.,

Ltd production

In co-production

avec Memento Films

Production, ARTE

France Cinéma

With the support of

ARTE France, Aide aux

Cinémas du Monde,

Centre National du

Cinéma et de l’Image

Animée - Institut

français, Memento

Films International

Executive Producer

Shen Yang

Cast

Hu Ge

Zhou Zenong

Gwei Lunmei

Liu Aiai

Liao Fan

Captain Liu

Wan Qian

Yang Shujun

Qi Dao

Huahua

Huang Jue

Yan Ge

Zeng Meihuizi

Ping Ping

Zhang Yicong

Xiao Dongbei

Chen Yongzhong

client

In Colour

[2.35:1]

Subtitles

Distributor

MUBI

Chinese

theatrical title

Nanfang Chezhan

de Juhui

A matter of life and death: Hu Ge

Credits and Synopsis