Ash Is Purest White

江湖儿女

China/France, 2018, colour, 16:9/4:3, 141 mins. (premiere version), 135 mins. (release version).

Director: Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯.

Rating: 5/10.

Mainland auteur Jia Jiangke’s most “mainstream” production is still more of the same, devoid of psychology or trenchancy.

STORY

Datong city, Shanxi province, northern China, Apr 2001. Smalltime mobster Guo Bin (Liao Fan) runs a nightclub-cum-gambling parlour along with his girlfriend Zhao Qiaoqiao (Zhao Tao) and delights in settling problems between fellow crooks in a low-key, non-violent way, consistent with underworld codes. During a visit to her home, Zhao Qiaoqiao discovers that her father is a vocal protestor against a local mine head who’s accused of corruption and loss of jobs. One night, after sorting out a local dispute involving some young ruffians, Guo Bin and Zhao Qiaoqiao are attacked in their car while driving home. Guo Bin is badly beaten and Zhao Qiaoqiao only stops the fighting by firing in the air a gun she’s been given by Guo Bin. Arrested by the police, she insists the gun is hers and is sentenced to five years in prison. Guo Bin is given one year but, after being released, never visits her. She is later transferred to a prison in Shuozhou, 140 kilometres south of Datong. After release in 2006 Zhao Qiaoqiao travels south to Fengjie county, Chongqing municipality, on the banks of the Yangtze river in the Three Gorges region. On the boat all her money is stolen by a woman (Ding Jiali) who disappears. She tries to track down Guo Bin, who has never returned her calls, and is told by a friend of his, Lin Jiadong (Diao Yi’nan), who now has a respectable job, that Guo Bin has gone into business outside of town. In fact, Guo Bin is hiding from her in the next room. Lin Jiadong’s younger sister, Lin Jiayan (Liang Jiayan) – whom Zhao Qiaoqiao also knows from the old days, when the pair would pay court to Guo Bin with gifts – says she and Guo Bin are lovers. Penniless, Zhao Qiaoqiao is left to fend for herself in Fengjie. She manages to scam some cash from a wealthy young businessman (Zhang Yi) at a restaurant, and later tracks down Guo Bin via the police. However, he refuses to return to Datong with her, saying he now has a new life. On the train home Zhao Qiaoqiao meets an eccentric stranger (Xu Zheng) who is on his way to Urumqi, Xinjiang province; initially she decides to go with him but later gets off the train while he’s asleep. Twelve years later, in early 2018, Zhao Qiaoqiao welcomes Guo Bin, now in a wheelchair, back to a Datong he hardly recognises. She now runs the nightclub and he gets a mixed reception from his old underworld pals.

REVIEW

Ash Is Purest White 江湖儿女 is more of the same from Mainland writer-director Jia Zhangke 贾樟柯, 48, who after 20 years still gives the impression of punching above his intellectual weight. His ninth fiction feature is basically an amalgam of themes in his last two – the episodic study of contemporary violence A Touch of Sin 天注定 (2013) and the equally episodic saga of friendship Mountains May Depart 山河故人 (2015) – into a supposed look at underworld codes via the story of a petty gangster and his determined girlfriend. Ash spreads its thin plot across 17 years, three sections and more than two hours of attractive images, random events and precious little psychology – with no special insights to reward the audience’s patience but a host of nudge-nudge cameos by well-known names to jolly things along. The most “mainstream” in feel and pacing of Jia’s films to date, it’s been the most commercially successful of his four fiction features released in the Mainland, taking only a modest RMB70 million but twice the amount of Mountains (RMB32 million), his only other film to make any impression at the box office. (Still Life 三峡好人, 2006, took a mere RMB300,000 and 24 City 二十四城记, 2008, just RMB1.4 million.)

As usual in Jia’s films, there’s a complete dearth of emotional or intellectual depth, even though his arty style tries to persuade the audience otherwise. Like Ash‘s petty criminals who mimic gangster codes learned from Hong Kong movies, Jia also mimics the stylistic affectations of more trenchant film-makers but has nothing original to say – beyond pop-culture references like music, fashion and old movies. It’s a recurrent weakness that was glaringly exposed in his feature-length documentary I Wish I Knew 上海传奇 (2010) – which had nothing to say about the city of Shanghai beyond its cinema culture – but has been present since his first feature, pickpocket drama Xiao Wu 小武 (1998).

Ash‘s Chinese title (“Sons and Daughters of the Jianghu [outlaw/criminal world]”) positions the film as a look at gangster codes and friendship, or at least those inherited from popular fiction. But apart from some scenes in the opening 50-minute section (plus a tag at the film’s end), the heart of the movie is a relationship between petty gangster Guo Bin and his determined girlfriend Zhao Qiaoqiao that moves across the course of 17 years from love through betrayal to an emotional nothingness. By setting the story in a period (2001-18) in which the Mainland has gone through seismic social and economic changes, the film assumes the guise – at least for some gullible foreign audiences – of a meaningful commentary on China’s development. But the setting is simply a faux-intellectual conceit: there’s no need for the story to be spread across such a long time-span, and such sagas have long become common in the Mainland industry, often with far more point than here.

Ash could be seen as an extension of Jia’s third feature, Unknown Pleasures 任逍遥 (2002), also set in 2001 in the underbelly of Datong, Shanxi province, 250 kilometres west of Beijing. But though in that film the same actress, Zhao Tao 赵涛, also played a character called Zhao Qiaoqiao, and one of her circle was named Bin, relationships and personalities were different, making the connection between the two works more of a directorial affectation than anything more meaningful. Ash is a far simpler story of a failed relationship whose passage is marked by changes in music and fashion – Jia’s favourite indicators of time – and, more importantly, by the man’s decision to go straight and move on with his life. Beyond that, there’s little else, and certainly nothing to engage the audience emotionally. Characters are given no motivation for their actions as Jia’s script shuffles them around at his convenience, and the so-called jianghu codes are shown by the end to mean little more than male braggadocio.

In the lead role, Jia’s regular muse Zhao, 41, who works rarely outside her husband’s films, gives her most animated performance to date, especially in the 55-minute middle section where her character has to fend for herself, both financially and emotionally. Though this section is weakened by distractingly having name personalities in small roles for no good reason – comedian Xu Zheng 徐峥 as a garrulous train passenger, actress Ding Jiali 丁嘉丽 as a boat thief, director-producer Zhang Yibai 张一白 as a potential scam victim – it at least gives Zhao the opportunity to do more than gaze into the middle distance or turn on her laser-like stare. As her perfidious gangster boyfriend, Liao Fan 廖凡, 44, oozes his usual blend of seediness and panther-like charm (Black Coal, Thin Ice 白日焰火, 2014; Guilty of Mind 心理罪, 2017) but, unlike Zhao, is mostly called upon to scale back his usual forcefulness, turning his character into even more of an enigma than it already is in the script. There’s a kind-of-reason for him deciding to go straight but none given for dumping such a loyal girl-friend.

Replacing Jia’s usual d.p. Yu Liwei 余力为, France’s Eric Gautier, who’s worked with some of the best in his native industry, serves up strikingly varied images of both industrial and wintry Shanxi (Jia’s home province) plus the summertime Three Gorges region, both of which have figured prominently in Jia’s movies. Period detail is generally acute via fashions and music, though Fengjie county looks too modern for 2006. All this visual detail, however, is hardly enough to sustain a two-hour-plus production.

The English titles of Jia’s movies have recently tended towards the arcane. This one stems from some unlikely philosophical dialogue between Zhao and Liao’s characters about volcanic vs cigarette ash, and presumably refers to the white heat of change in China. After its Cannes festival premiere the film was tightened by some six minutes; deletions included a cameo by veteran director Feng Xiaogang 冯小刚 as a Beijing doctor. Version reviewed here is the release one.

CREDITS

Presented by Shanghai Film Group (CN), Xstream Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Huanxi Media Group (Taizhou) (CN), Huanxi Media Group (Tianjin) (CN), Huayi Brothers Pictures (CN), MK Productions (FR), BJ Runjin Investment (CN), Wishart Media (CN), Enchant (Shanghai) Film & TV Culture (CN). Produced by Shanghai Film Group (CN), Xstream Pictures (Beijing) (CN), Top Clever (CN).

Script: Jia Zhangke. Photography: Eric Gautier. Editing: Matthieu Laclau, Lin Xudong. Music: Lin Qiang [Lim Giong]. Art direction: Liu Weixin. Styling: Wang Tao. Sound: Zhang Yang, Olivier Goinard. Action: Yi Daxiong. Visual effects: Rodolphe Chabrier. Executive direction: Wang Jing.

Cast: Zhao Tao (Zhao Qiaoqiao), Liao Fan (Guo Bin), Xu Zheng (man on train), Liang Jiayan (Lin Jiayan), Diao Yi’nan (Lin Jiadong), Zhang Yibai (man not scammed in restaurant), Ding Jiali (woman on boat), Zhang Yi (man scammed in restaurant), Dong Zijian (policeman in Fengjie), Li Xuan (Li Xuan), Zha Na (Xiaoqing, female dancer), Kang Kang (male dancer), Feng Jiamei (Chaozhou Chamber of Commerce receptionist), Liu Min, Zhang Xiaojun, Zhang Jiaojiao.

Premiere: Cannes Film Festival (Competition), 11 May 2018.

Release: China, 21 Sep 2018; France, 29 Feb 2019.