Country Detective
江湖佬
China, 2018, colour, 2.35:1, 60 mins.
Director: Chen Congcong 陈聪聪.
Rating: 5/10.
Clever but over-manipulative whodunit is stronger on atmosphere than playing fair with its audience.
STORY
A rural town in southern China, 1999. Zhou (Jiang Xingmin), a fortune teller, and Shen Mu (Jiang Luchang) fall to talking about a spate of murders committed six years ago and some recent murders that Shen Mu notified the police about. Back in 1993, when a man (Zhang Yong) strangled a policeman and later shot three farmers from whom he’d hitched a lift, Zhou, a local fortune-teller, tried to stop him escaping but was badly beaten. Until Shen Mu, he was the only person to have met the killer and survived. Shen Mu tells his story: how he was recently hunting wild game in the Leiming mountains with a mute guide (Jiang Juechun) when they came across a bamboo hut with three bodies inside. The police deduced it was the same killer from six years earlier and offered RMB50,000 for more information. To earn some quick money, Shen Mu studied the 1993 case and suggested to his mute friend that they go back to the hut and investigate. He also interviewed Zhou, to whose evidence the police never gave much credence as he was considered a fortune-telling eccentric. While gathering evidence at the hut, Shen Mu and the mute were fired upon and the latter was wounded. Shen Mu tried to carry his friend down the mountain but says he was accosted by the killer, who challenged him to end his friend’s life with a knife. The killer also took pictures of Shen Mu with his friend and a knife. Later, the killer followed Shen Mu around in town, harrassing him over the incriminating film; at the same time a herbalist doctor whom Shen Mu regularly used was found murdered. Zhou, meanwhile, developed his own theory as to the truth of the killings, winning the confidence of local policeman Wang (Li Jun). As they end their discussion, Zhou tells Shen Mu his “solution” to the serial-killer mystery.
REVIEW
With its hour-long running time, and playfully obscure structure, Country Detective 江湖佬 falls uneasily between an over-long short and an under-long feature. Viewed as the former, it’s over-crowded with detail and tries to do too much in a limited time; as the latter, it’s short on deductive detail and doesn’t play fair as a whodunit with its audience. Despite that, Guangdong-born writer-director Chen Congcong 陈聪聪, 30, who studied Fine Arts before making several shorts, shows a good grasp of atmosphere that sustains itself even when the viewer is being deliberately confused. An interesting riff on the serial-killer genre, in which fact fights with superstition and even the final solution may not be the correct one, Detective is enough to raise interest in Chen’s next project, announced as The Football Night 橄榄球之夜, produced by established director Guan Hu 管虎.
Though the story is set in the 1990s – a time of rural superstition that has now passed, an opening caption assures us – the film makes nothing of its period setting and could just as well be set in the present. Detective basically boils down to a chat between two people – a yokel (the 江湖佬 of the title) representing traditional superstitions and a seemingly much smarter opportunist looking to make some money – about two sets of murders, separated by six years, that are assumed to be by the same serial killer. The yokel claims he witnessed some of the earlier murders and actually tussled with the perpetrator; the opportunist claims he reported the second murders after finding the bodies in a hill hut. Most of the film is flashbacks describing their claims, begging the obvious question whether either is a reliable narrator.
Little is actually made of the yokel’s superstitious background beyond vague talk of spirits and so on, while the other man’s story (which takes up the bulk of the film) is presented in a deliberately fragmented manner. When the former suddenly presents his “solution” to the murders at the end, there’s no sense of revelation as the script has hardly laid out the facts in a way that the audience can feel engaged in solving the mystery. Throughout, writer-director Chen always makes his presence felt, manipulating what the viewer is allowed to see: both narratives are perversely oblique, with atmosphere taking precedence over clarity; so, though the “solution” is clever and well-disguised, it basically comes across as just another directorial trick.
Performances are OK, in a taciturn, rustic way, though not helped by awkwardly post-synched dialogue. As the crafty opportunist, Jiang Luchang 蒋录长 ends up as more charismatic than Jiang Xingman 蒋兴满 as the superstition-led yokel – which is surely not what the director intended. Widescreen photography by Huang Donghui 黄东辉 makes much of mist-wreathed hills in a naturalistic style, and fellow indie film-maker Qiu Sheng 仇晟 (Suburban Birds 郊区的鸟, 2018) gets a credit for editing advice. Dialogue is almost all in heavy dialect. Locations were in Guizhou and Hunan provinces, southern China.
CREDITS
Presented by Dream City (CN), 9 Movie Minutes (CN). Produced by Dream City (CN), Chen Congcong Studio (CN).
Script: Chen Congcong. Photography: Huang Donghui. Editing: Chen Congcong. Editing advice: Qiu Sheng. Music: Lu Zhi. Music supervision: Gao Lei. Art direction: Jiang Xinyu. Sound: Liu Jia, Jeremy John Butler.
Cast: Jiang Xingman (Zhou), Jiang Luchang (Shen Mu), Zhang Yong (killer), Jiang Juechun (mute), Li Yan (Shen Mu’s wife), Li Jun (Wang, policeman), Li Weidong (old policeman), Yang Maolin (mute’s son), Yang Jiaocheng (suspect in red), He Lianshun (pig farmer), Li Huanzhen (herbalist doctor), Zhao Xinming (trishaw driver), Yang Changzhong, Chen Jianjian (farmers).
Premiere: First Film Festival (Competition), Xining, China, 22 Jul 2018.
Release: China, tba.