Crosscurrent
长江图
China, 2016, colour, 2.35:1, 116 mins.
Director: Yang Chao 杨超.
Rating: 2/10.
Ponderous and pretentious fantasy-drama about a Yangtze barge captain and a woman of his dreams.
STORY
Shanghai, 2012, winter. Gao Chun (Qin Hao), captain of the Yangtze River barge Guangde 039, spots a pretty young woman on another boat while at anchor. But he doesn’t get time to talk to her, as he has to leave to reach Jiangyin on time the following afternoon. He finds an old handwritten collection of poems called Map of the Yangtze River 长江图, dating from the late 1980s, that were obviously written by a deckhand and describe his thoughts about the river and a young woman. In Jiangyin, Gao Chun picks up a mysterious cargo from Luo Ding (Tan Kai) and demands extra payment for transporting it; also, a young deckhand, Wu Sheng (Wu Lipeng), comes on board, joining veteran deckhand Zhong Xiang (Jiang Hualin), who worked for Gao Chun’s late father. Gao Chun visits the young woman, An Lu (Xin Zhilei), and they make love. She says she loves him; he says he spotted her in Shanghai. As the barge moves on up the river, Gao Chun finds himself following the same journey as the author of the poems. At Digang, on the eighth day, he thinks he spots An Lu in an old Buddhist pagoda. At Tongling he visits her in a once-flooded, now almost deserted stone village, and they make love again. Gao Chun moves on with his journey. In an argument, Wu Sheng threatens to leave the barge and then disappears over the side. Gao Chun and Uncle Xiang search the nighttime waters for him, without success. On the 19th day the barge reaches Yichang and on the 23rd it passes through the Three Gorges Reservoir. As Gao Chun becomes more and more obsessed by An Lu and the poems, he draws nearer and nearer to Yibin, the barge’s destination.
REVIEW
In the decade since his first feature, Passages 旅程 (2004), Mainland indie director Yang Chao 杨超, now in his early 40s, hasn’t improved a jot. Where Passages followed two young people back and forth between Anhui province and Wuhan in search of magic-mushroom spores, Crosscurrent 长江图 follows a young Yangtze River barge captain as he moves up-river, searching for a magical woman from a book of poems. But this is no Heart of Darkness-like journey: like the earlier feature the film has a cold, hollow centre which prevents the viewer from becoming engaged with the main character and joining him on the voyage. What’s left is some attractive photography of the wintry Yangtze between Shanghai and Yibin by ace Taiwan d.p. Li Pingbin 李屏宾 [Mark Lee] and a lot of pretentious poetical musings on the soundtrack that add up to nothing. Shot four years ago, the film inexplicably ended up in the 2016 Berlin film festival’s competition, where it finally received its world premiere.
Lead actor Qin Hao, then early in his career and known for moody roles in indies by Wang Xiaoshuai 王小帅 (Shanghai Dreams 青红, 2005; Chongqing Blues 日照重庆, 2010) and Lou Ye 娄烨 (gay drama Spring Fever 春风沉醉的夜晚, 2010), doesn’t do much except look moody again, though to be fair the script doesn’t require him to do much else. As the woman of his dreams – plus the “spirit” of the Yangtze – Xin Zhilei 辛芷蕾 (horrors Haunting Love 诡爱, 2012, and Bunshinsaba II 笔仙II, 2013) is only required to look beautiful and mysterious. Both of these she manages flawlessly but, like Qin, she’s essentially a puppet of the director; neither role emotionally engages the viewer and the theme of people’s lives passing in the night like ships is hackneyed.
Though Li’s widescreen images are always photogenic, in dim interiors they look blurry on the big screen, which reduces the film’s visual impact. Occasional music – strings, piano – has a simple, wistful quality but doesn’t help to ease the long voyage. A brief coda set in Tibet seems pointless. The film’s Chinese title means “Map of the Yangtze River”, which is also the name of the collection of poems.
CREDITS
Presented by Trend Cultural Investment (CN), Ray Production (CN), Just Show Production (CN), Shandong Jiaobo Culture Development (CN). Produced by Beijing Trend Cultural Investment (CN), Ray Production.
Script: Yang Chao. Photography: Li Pingbin [Mark Lee]. Editing: Yang Mingming, Kong Jinlei. Music: An Wei. Art direction: Zhao Ye. Costumes: Wang Yankun. Sound: An Wei, Fang Tao, Hao Zhiyu, Yan Mingzhi. Executive director: Zhu Jie.
Cast: Qin Hao (Gao Chun), Xin Zhilei (An Lu), Wu Lipeng (Wu Sheng), Wang Hongwei (Hongwei), Jiang Hualin (Zhong Xiang), Tan Kai (Luo Ding), Yang Chao (voice-over narrator).
Premiere: Berlin Film Festival (Competition), 15 Feb 2016.
Release: China, 8 Sep 2016.