Fading Shadow [远山淡影] (2022)

Fading Shadow is a very interesting crime drama that seems to have gone largely under the radar both in China and abroad. Set in the 1990s in central China near the Yangtze, a man's body (a photo shop owner) is found in a deserted marsh having been shot with a a homemade gun. Police portrait…

A New Old Play [椒麻堂会] (2021)

A strikingly original absurdist comedy-drama reminiscent of a (more accessible) Beckett play or, in an Irish context, Cré na Cille (2007). This three hour film opens as two demons come to take famous actor Qiu Fuxin to the underworld. He reluctantly goes along and recalls his life starting in 1920s Sichuan when, having been left…

Nobody Knows [胆小鬼] (2022)

Nobody Knows (Coward in Chinese) is another Chinese crime drama (on Youku) set largely in the past and tracing the impact of a violent crime on the characters' later lives. But while the standard plot for such dramas is set in (or close to) the present with flashbacks to past events, this series is largely…

Lost in the Mountain [空山轶] (2011)

Mountains [山] are a popular trope in Chinese independent movies representing, I assume, a wilder and freer alternative to everyday urban life. In this film, by director Gao Zipeng, four friends set off into the mountains on a quest for a companion - Bielei - who has gone missing some time earlier. Starting from an…

Homesick [回来的女儿] (2022)

Homesick [The Returned Daughter in Chinese] sees a return to form for iQiyi’s Light On series. After a bright start in 2020 with series like the Bad Kids, the quality of the output faded in 2021-22 (Personally I liked The Pavillion (2021) but this was a minority view and that series got only 5.6 on Douban). Homesick is by…

The Wife’s Secret World [妻子的秘密世界] (2022)

This series, albeit on a much lower budget, shares a number of themes with the recent Shards of Her including being woman-focussed and using amnesia as a major plot device in story exposition. Unlike many padded Chinese series, this runs to 25 episodes but of only 10-12 minutes each. It is, in effect, a modern…

Mainland Prostitute [村妓] (1994)

This film is one of the few movies based on the work of Shen Congwen. Shen is one of the greatest Chinese authors of the twentieth century but his critical independence meant that he fell foul of both the KMT and CCP. No films based on his work were made on the mainland until the…