Only the River Flows
Neo-noir detective about a murder investigation in rural China in the 1990s. Superintendent Ma Zhe soon has a suspect arrested, but when more murders follow, questions arise whether the right man has been caught.
1995. A village in southern China. Decay hangs in the air. The body of an old woman is found by the river. Detective Ma Zhe leads the investigation from a cinema that is no longer in use and is in charge of a brigade of exceptionally uninspired officers. He quickly manages to apprehend a suspect, much to the delight of his superiors, who consider the case solved. As the body count increases, the inspector gets obsessed with the case. He follows a suspect associated with the victim, but who always manages to escape him. Meanwhile, many secrets appear to lurk beneath the surface in the village.
ONLY THE RIVER FLOWS is not your average whodunnit. Director Shujun Wei uses the murder investigation to give his sometimes-absurdist take on an important transitional phase in Chinese history. The combination of coarse-grained film material with lots of rain and fog makes the film fit into the neo-noir genre. The film was very successful in Chinese cinemas.
(mv)