Ash

This riveting sophomore feature by Li Xiaofeng ranks among the finest of a new crop of Chinese neo-noirs, a genre that appears to be growing in favour in recent years among independent-leaning filmmakers in China. To noir’s staple of blood-stained despair, „Ash“ adds a potent dose of male chauvinism and repressed desire.A body is found in a movie theatre. Clues suggest it may be a case of rough justice, for the man who met a violent death was himself a violent man who battered his wife. The cop investigating the murder suspects the dead man’s son, a steelworker, but lacks the evidence to charge the young man. Thwarted in his studies, but an avid reader, the steelworker becomes an unlikely pen-pal to a medical student. Both are drawn to each other by their shared passion for Tolstoy’s last novel „Resurrection“, and a romantic question prompted by Tolstoy’s story that one of them has scribbled on the inside of a used paperback. Ten years later, the three men – now a hard-bitten cop, famous doctor and lowly delivery man – find themselves bound together again in a tangled web of lies and suspicions, as memories of a second murder threaten to betray long-held secrets. The film delivers on the promise already apparent in Li’s first feature „Nezha“ (2014) – that he is a director to watch.

(Cheng-Sim Lim)